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“ From the magniphone sounded a scuffling of feet, 
the tumult of voices.” 


[Page 215] 



T. HAVILAND HICKS 
FRESHMAN 


BY 

J. EAYMOND ELDERDICE 



ILLUSTRATED BT 


GEORGE AVISON 


NEW YORK AND LONDON 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1915 


/ 


Copyright, 1915, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 

SEP 231915 

©CI.A411635 




TO 

M. H. 


4 t 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. Introducing — T. Hicks . 




PAGE 

. I 

II. 

Hicks Posts a Defi . 

. 



• 17 

III. 

Hicks and the Hazers . 

. 



• 35 

IV. 

Enter — T. Haviland Hicks, 

JK.! 



• 55 

V. 

What Shakespeare Said of 

Hicks 


• 77 

VI. 

Hicks Pays for His Glory 




• 95 

VII. 

Hicks Scores a Touchdown 




• 113 

VIII. 

The Circle of Glory 




• 134 

IX. 

IcHABOD Scores an Assist 




• 154 

X. 

Hicks Explains . 




• 177 

XI. 

ICHABOD Speaks! 




• 195 

XII. 

Hicks Makes a Sacrifice 




. 212 

XIII. 

A Victory Unpublished . 




. 229 

XIV. 

Hicks Gets a Letter 




. 250 

XV. 

Hicks Accidentally Stars 




. 272 

XVI. 

Exit Hicks, Freshman 

• 

# 


. 293 


f 







/ 






» 


# 





\ 


% 


i 





I 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

From the magniphone sounded a scuffling of 
feet, the tumult of voices ’’ . . Frontispiece ^ 

FACING 

PAGE 

“ Making strenuous efforts to locate the ‘Lost 


Chord’” 78 

“Hearing thudding footfalls approaching, he 

set off at a mad sprint ” 130 ' 

“I am going to find that record and smash 

it!” 244 v- 



T. HAVILAND HICKS, 
FRESHMAN 

I 

INTRODUCING T. HICKS 

J OHN HOLLINGSWORTH MER- 
RITT, better known to his chums of 
the Bannister College campus as “Jack,” 
perched on the sacred Senior fence between 
the Gymnasium and the Administration 
Building, wrapped in a gold and green foot- 
ball sweater, and profound meditation. 

In the official Sophomore class meeting 
that day, he had been elected president of 
the class of 1918; the previous midnight, in 
secret conclave, the Sophomores had unani- 
mously insisted that he become the leader of 


I 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


their nocturnal hazing expeditions to the 
abode of the humble Freshmen. With the 
enormous weight of responsibility from these 
two important honors resting heavily on his 
mind, Jack Merritt was in a meditative mood. 

At his right hand sat big “Babe” McCabe, 
the Bannister fullback, while the fence at his 
left creaked ominously under the weight of 
“Heavy” Hughes, the bulky right tackle ; like 
the class president, both were Sophomores, 
and the distinguished triumvirate gazed 
hungrily at the Freshman dormitory, after 
the fashion of a small boy waiting for his 
Thanksgiving dinner. 

The college bell in the Senior tower had 
just sounded the seven o’clock study hour — 
collegians ceased skylarking in the rooms and 
corridors of the upper-class dormitories — 
shafts of light from the windows fell athwart 
the campus darkness like glowing fingers out- 


2 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


stretched, and slowly the chaos subsided to a 
beautiful quiet. 

“Back to Old Bannister for another year, 
fellows Jack Merritt, who had been gaz- 
ing silently at the familiar campus and college 
buildings, broke the stillness, “Another year 
of joys and sorrows, success and disappoint- 
ment, class rivalry, sports, and — study ! 
This time we are Sophomores, and where we 
shivered in dread last September, the pres- 
ent Freshmen fear our coming, and are 
awed !” 

“They had better be good!” chuckled the 
good-natured Babe. “It’s time for the hazing 
season to begin. Jack, and for us to show the 
Freshmen that we are their masters. Our 
class must triumph over ’19 in everything 
this year ; they must not steal our colors, or 
win any of the inter-class contests.” 

“With Jack Merritt to lead us,” boomed 


3 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Heavy, confidently, “we shall set a new 
Sophomore record for victory, as we did a 
Freshman one last year, when we outwitted 
’17 every time! We won the class rush, the 
football, baseball, and track contests, and — 
we stole the Soph colors; we did get thor- 
oughly hazed, but we’ll pass that on, with 
interest I” 

Jack Merritt, a fine-looking, clean-cut ath- 
letic youth, who, in his Freshman year, by 
his resourceful mind, had successfully led his 
class against the traditional enemy, the Soph- 
omores, spoke thoughtfully : 

“I’ll do my best, of course, to uphold the 
honor of our class ! But the Freshmen have 
the largest crowd in the history of Bannister, 
and if a born leader comes from among them 
to organize that chaotic mass, they will be 
dangerous. Once some Freshman with 
brains and inspiration arises to direct them. 


4 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


to show them their power — ^we Sophomores 
will be kept busy !” 

“They haven’t ‘any such animal !’ ” scorned 
the behem.oth Babe. “I inspected the entire 
aggregation in chapel today, and not a one of 
them will give our famous Jack Merritt any 
trouble. Oh, we’ll conquer the Freshmen, all 

right, and haze every one of ” 

He never finished, for at that instant came 
a most sensational interruption — something 
happened that shocked even the self-pos- 
sessed Jack Merritt beyond the powers of 
speech, and nearly tumbled that husky foot- 
ball duo — Babe and Heavy — from the Senior 
fence. Rudely shattering the beautiful quiet 
that had settled on campus and dormitories, 
there sounded : 

“ N eeta — waw — haw — un — neeta ! Ask thy soul 

if we — should — part! 

Neeta — waw — haw — un — neetal Lean thou on — ■ 
my — heart !” 


5 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


A raucous voice possessing more volume 
than melody awoke the echoes, and at the 
window of a room on the third floor of 
Creighton Hall, the home of the Freshmen, 
who were popularly supposed to keep quiet 
at all times, appeared a slender figure, grace- 
fully posing, with a banjo. The lathe-like 
form of a troubadour Freshman was clearly 
seen in the electric light, and as he sang, he 
carelessly strummed the strings. 

Soon the windows of the Junior and the 
Senior dormitories flew up, heads were thrust 
out hastily, and hilarious upper-classmen 
shouted various comments : 

“Hark to the Caruso ! Rah for the Fresh- 
man who defies the hazers ! Ask the Metro- 
politan Opera Company for a contract, 
Freshie! You’ll sing when the hazers visit 
you, so practice away! Do you hear him. 
Jack Merritt? What a joke on the mighty 
6 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


Sophomores — ^will they haze this Freshman 
— will they?” 

The Freshman minstrel, vastly encouraged 
by the thunderous applause his operatic en- 
deavors produced, from the riotous upper- 
classmen, at least, gave as his encore the fa- 
mous Yale “Boola” song, but he rendered it: 
“We are Freshmen, foolish Freshmen, we 
are Freshmen ” 

“Come on. Babe — Heavy!” exploded the 
aroused Jack Merritt, who had been utterly 
paralyzed by the sheer bravado of the bean- 
pole Freshman at the window. “We’ll show 
Mr. Freshie just how foolish he is, to defy 
us I We must silence him, or the whole col- 
lege will ridicule us !” 

The newly elected Sophomore president 
celebrated his rise to office by leading a 
charge up the stairway of the Freshman dor- 
mitory, to the third floor, followed valiantly 


8 


7 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


by the lumbering football stars; thus was 
started what was destined to become a Ban- 
nister tradition — that of rushing up to this 
same care-free collegian’s room to quell his 
yocal endeavors! 

As but a few days had passed since Ban- 
nister opened for another year, most of the 
Freshmen had not finished unpacking, and a 
number of trunks and boxes were stacked in 
the corridor. In their haste, Hughes and 
McCabe, who had abandoned grace as they 
took on tonnage, and consequently rivaled 
two elephants for clumsiness, fell over some 
of these, so that by the time the room of the 
youthful Caruso was reached, they were in 
an extremely cheerful humor. 

“Break in the door!” shouted Jack reck- 
lessly, and the two heavy gridiron warriors 
hurled their bulk against the portal with the 
same catapult force they would have directed 
8 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


against a line of scrimmage. However, as 
they had failed, in their rage, to observe that 
the door was slightly ajar, the three Sopho- 
mores crashed to the floor, failing to make 
the impressive entrance they had planned, 
but achieving a far more interesting one, 

“Five yards — first down — two yards to 
gain!” announced the Freshman, judicially. 
“Rush ’em, Bannister ! Is that the conven- 
tional method of entering rooms here at col- 
lege ? I must practice it, so I can agreeably 
impress my instructors by entering their 
classrooms thusly !” 

The room at which the Sophomores gazed, 
as they recovered their dignity, was bleak 
and cheerless — no carpet or rug on the floor, 
no furniture except the single bed, study- 
table, and two chairs, and a solitary picture 
adorned the bare walls — “Napoleon’s Retreat 
from Moscow,” a cheap print. Altogether, 


9 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


it was not an apartment cheery enough to 
cause anyone to burst into song, and the sur- 
prised trio surveyed the Freshman. 

By the window stood the slender youth, 
who possessed the Herculean proportions of 
a full-fledged Jersey mosquito, and the mus- 
cular development of a toothpick. He was 
friendly looking, with his invariable grin, his 
beaming, honest countenance, and his twin- 
kling eyes that radiated a constant good 
humor — they warmed to his cheery smile, but 
remained stern and grim. 

“He must be a poor student!” whispered 
Babe, scanning the comfortless room. “Per- 
haps he will work his way at Bannister, 
and ” 

“Not singing as he works, though!” re- 
sponded Jack Merritt at once. “Say, you 
noisy, insubordinate Freshman, your name? 
Quick — no trifling with us !” 


10 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


“T. Hicks — for the nonce, whatever that 
is,” grinned the blithesome Freshman, strik- 
ing a graceful pose, banjo in hand. “It is 
said that ‘music hath charms to soothe the 
savage breast,’ and mine seems to have lured 
hither three — Sophomores, which is all the 
same! By request, I will now render, with 
banjo accompaniment, that beautiful war bal- 
lad entitled, ‘There’s a Shipwreck in the 
Subway — and an Aeroplane has Sunk I’ ” 

“By request — ^you will — not!” roared 
Heavy, disarming the cheerful troubadour, 
and casting the offending banjo into the 
closet. “We will show you — “Hello, whom 
have we with us tonight, fellows? Be- 
hold ” 

A small, shrinking, bespectacled youth, 
with an intensely scholastic appearance, slid 
fearfully into the room, and sat down sud- 
denly on the extreme edge of a chair, as if it 


II 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN, 


had been a volcano crater. On seeing the 
Sophomores, he betrayed a painful eagerness 
to imitate the immortal example of the illus- 
trious Napoleon, on the wall, but he was too 
paralyzed with fear to retreat. 

“Theophilus Opperdyke, sir, is my name !” 
he stammered. “I didn’t mean — that is, s-sir, 
I didn’t know you were here — I guess I will 
go now, s-sirs !” 

‘‘Oh, no, please linger!” requested Jack, 
who was vastly amused at the ridiculously 
shrill voice of the little Freshman. “You are 
going to sing ‘Home, Sweet Home’ for us, 
Theophilus, indeed, you are! Ready — one — 
two ” 

“That’s queer,” T. Hicks confided inno- 
cently to Napoleon. “When I sing, they 
rush up and make me stop, and here they 
request Theophilus, who would a great deal 
rather be extracting the cube root of ” 


12 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


'‘Keep quiet!” thundered Heavy Hughes, 
as shivering little Opperdyke began, in a 
quavering voice, to shrill the song all Fresh- 
men think of at the first of a college year., 
“That’s fine, Theophilus — Jack, we must 
haze this pair together, and T. Hicks will play 
an accompaniment on his beloved banjo !” 

“Then you won’t take my banjo away from 
me ?” queried T. Hicks, happily. “Oh, dear, 
kind Sophomores, how happy you make me ! 
I have always read of college fellows arrang- 
ing themselves about the campus in pictur- 
esque poses, singing songs and twanging a 
banjo, so I practiced faithfully all summer, 
to be in good training for my brilliant career 
at Bannister. Won’t I look entrancing, 
Theophilus, adorning the scenery with my 
classic form, and twanging ” 

“Will you keep quiet?” demanded Jack 
Merritt, who decided that in some way the 


13 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


cherubic Freshman was amusing himself at 
their expense. “You are too impudent a 
Freshman, and the Grand Order of Bannister 
Hazers will visit you soon, to indicate your 
place in the plan of college existence — an in- 
significant niche! Don’t let us hear that 
banjo, and that wild squawking again, unless 
we command it, understand?” 

“He calls my singing a squawk!” mur- 
mured T. Hicks, deeply hurt. “After I had 
my voice cultivated all summer to keep it 
from being harrowing, these musical critics 
decide it is a squawk ! Say, Theophilus, if an 
Indian squaw should sing for these fellows, 
would they call it an Indian ‘squawking?’” 

‘‘You are in bad company, Theophilus Op- 
perdyke!” Jack Merritt, to hide his confus- 
ion, whirled so fiercely on the bespectacled, 
shaking Freshman that he almost fell from 
the chair in fright. “You, too, must be hazed 


14 


INTRODUCING— T. HICKS 


— for associating with this Hicks, you must 
suffer — is it not just ?” 

“No, sir — I mean, yes, sir !” faltered poor 
Theophilus, twiddling his fingers nervously. 
“Yes, sir, if you say so, sir !” 

“A very ‘sir-ly’ youth, is he not?” beamed 
the irrepressible Hicks. “You must really 
be amazed at my brilliant humor, but I con- 
fidently expect to eclipse Mark Twain, and 
thake O. Henry’s stories seem as dry as the 
Annual report of the Department of Agri- 
culture.” 

“Come, fellows,” said the Sophomore 
leader, quietly. “We cannot waste time 
now, talking — ^later, we must act!” 

“If ‘actions speak louder than words,’ ” 
the lathe-like Freshman again confided in the 
silent Napoleon, “I’m afraid that if I ever act, 
the noise will deafen the college ! It is also 
quoted that ‘talk is cheap,’ which is a good 


15 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


thing, or the Sophomores would be bankrupt, 
if they had to pay for all they use !” 

Without a word, the Sophomores clattered 
down the stairs, strode across the campus to 
Jack Merritt’s room on the second floor of 
Smithson, the second-year dormitory, and 
entered. Babe sat down heavily in an arm- 
chair, Heavy passed a hand before his eyes 
dazedly as he collapsed on the bed, and Jack 
stood gazing silently across at a certain win- 
dow on the third floor of Creighton Hall, 
where a slender figure stood. 

A moment of deepest silence, and then 
Babe gasped : 

“I stated that the Freshmen did not have 
a natural-born leader who could make trouble 
for our Jack Merritt — I withdraw that rash 
announcement, for the class of ’19 has — 
T. Hicks!” 


II 

HICKS POSTS A DEFI 

W HEN the invading detail of Sopho- 
mores, under the leadership of Jack 
Merritt, who seemed to have met a Waterloo 
under the very eyes of Mr, Napoleon who 
had not yet encountered his, had withdrawn 
in disorder, the cherubic-faced Freshman 
who had announced himself as “T. Hicks” 
retrieved the banjo from the closet. 

“I am sorely tempted again to caress the 
strings, Theophilus,” he remarked, as he 
glanced across at Smithson. “However, as 
‘discretion is the better part of valor,’ I must 

17 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

be content with the honors of battle I have 
won in the first skirmish with the mighty 
Sophs. If I — why, Theophilus — ^what’s the 
matter ?” 

Little Theophilus Opperdyke, without an- 
nouncing his intention to the talkative Hicks, 
slumped suddenly in his chair, and then slid 
very quietly to the floor, where he stretched 
out, white and silent. T. Hicks, naturally 
alarmed by this peculiar action on the part 
of his classmate, opened the door and 
shouted excitedly : 

“Hello, Butch! Say, Butch! Oh, 
Butch ” 

From the room across the corridor there 
sounded a deep growl, the door was opened, 
and a hugh form loomed in the doorway of 
Hicks’ room ; it was as though a great bear 
had waddled from its den, growling at some 
noise outside! This mammoth Freshman, 

i8 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


who, because of his generous size and the 
slaughter he had wrought to the scrub scrim- 
mage line, had been called “Butch” by the 
football squad, lumbered hurriedly on the 
scene. 

“Heigh-ho!” the young Hercules, who 
was even more vast than either Babe or 
Heavy, creaked forward, lifted Theophilus 
from the floor with a wonderful tenderness, 
and laid the frail body on Hicks’ bed. He 
sprinkled water on the white, thin face, while 
the splinter of humanity who called himself 
“T. Hicks” hovered anxiously near, offering 
all sorts of weird and useless suggestions 
from an incoherent memory of a book on 
“First Aid to the Injured,” which he had once 
read. 

“Nonsense,” growled Butch, brushing 
aside the bothersome Hicks. “He’s just 
fainted, that’s all ! Wonder what made him 

19 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


tumble off like this ? Queer little chap, any- 
way, just a bundle of nerves !” 

Theophilus Opperdyke’s eyes opened 
slowly, he struggled to sit up on the bed, and 
regarded his two anxious classmates with 
embarrassment, a flush of shame at his weak- 
ness coloring his pale face. Brewster tried 
to prop him up on his strong arm, but the 
little Freshman pushed him away, and 
bravely climbed to his feet. 

“I — I don’t know what makes me act in 
such a silly way, fellows,” he quavered, in 
his ridiculously thin, shrill voice, “but those 
Sophomores made me sing, and — and when 
they threatened to come and haze me, I just 
fainted away ! I can’t help it, I am so nerv- 
ous and weak, that any little shock upsets 
me! 

“Last year, when I was at the Preparatory 
School, some hazers broke into my room one 


20 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


night all hideously masked and draped in 
sheets; I just fainted at the sight, and the 
next day I was delirious with brain fever — 
for weeks I was near death, and ever since 
I’ve been all nerves. I am so afraid of the 
hazers here, and at nights I lie awake, I can’t 
sleep, for I dread their coming in the dark, 
ghostly and white ! 

‘T know the fellows at Bannister wouldn’t 
hurt me for the world, but — I’m so afraid of 
those ghastly forms! You see, they don’t 
understand how the sudden shock of waking 
up and seeing them in the dark completely 
breaks me down I They wouldn’t harm me, 
on purpose, but Oh, Jack — I mean, Mr. Mer- 
ritt said I would be hazed for ” 

“For being caught in my company!” fin- 
ished T. Hicks, grimly. “Now see here, 
Theophilus, you just amble back to your 
room, and to your beloved toil of excavating 


21 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


square and cube roots. If T. Hicks has 
brains enough to prevent it, those hazers will 
never bother you — or him, either, for that 
matter! Just forget the Sophomores, and 
don’t be worried, for I’m going to save you 
from them I” 

“Oh, thank you, sir, Mr. Hicks!” The- 
ophilus, ordered by the Sophomores thus to 
address all upper-classmen, generously in- 
cluded Hicks, in his excitement ; he evidently 
took the Freshman’s rash promise in solemn 
faith, and felt sure that the blithesome singer 
would deliver him from the dreaded hazers. 

When the queer, bespectacled little Fresh- 
man had gone, radiant in the belief that this 
wonderful T. Hicks would keep his word, big 
Butch Brewster, who bad been studying the 
slender youth seriously, but seemingly with- 
out definite result, spoke slowly : 

“Hicks, that was a very rash statement 


22 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


you made — that you will save poor little 
Opperdyke from Jack Merritt and the hazers. 
What plan have you that can possibly 
work ” 

“I work entirely by inspiration, Butch,” 
responded the bean-pole Freshman, on whom 
the burden of his self-imposed task weighed 
lightly. “At present I haven’t the slightest 
idea of how the thing will be achieved — I’ll 
just wait for an inspiration to spring through 
the corridors of my colossal brain, then I’ll 
act. If the inspiration doesn’t come, I don’t 
work!” 

“You don’t seem to have done much work,” 
reflected the bear-like Freshman, who meant 
no sarcasm, but was really scanning Hicks’ 
toothpick structure with interest. “How- 
ever, I don’t think you ought to have raised 
his hopes, for you can’t make good on that 
wild statement, and ” 


3 


23 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“Just leave it to me !” requested the festive 
T. Hicks, debonairly. “THeophilus must be 
saved, you know that, Butch; seriously, the 
shock of having the hazers in their awesome 
garb, come into his room might prove fatal 
to him, in his condition !” 

“It’s too bad,” agreed Butch, thoughtfully, 
“but as you say, he has got to be spared this 
hazing ! It would be futile to plead or argue 
with the Sophomores, and explain the situ- 
ation; they know they won’t be rough with 
Theophilus, or hurt him in the slightest, and 
they don’t understand that their very ghostly 
visit may scare him badly, poor little chap !” 

“I’ll attend to the affair,” the football can- 
didate was utterly bewildered by the calm 
confidence of his lathe-like companion. “The 
Boy Scouts, Butch, do a good turn daily — I’m 
not a Boy Scout, but it’s a great idea, and I 
try to do a good turn whenever I can. I fig- 


24 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


ure that if I keep the Sophs from hazing 
Theophilus, and scaring him into nervous 
prostration, I ought to get credit for a week- 
ful of good turns, so — just leave it to me, 
Butch!” 

When big, good-natured Butch Brewster, 
who turned in the doorway a moment to stare 
perplexedly at the blithesome, mosquito-like 
T. Hicks, had creaked across the corridor to 
his room, the slim Freshman stood by the 
window, gazing across the Quadrangle at 
Smithson Hall, where the three Sophomores, 
aided now by two more, held a meeting in 
Jack Merritt’s room. 

“A Committee of Ways and Means to 
quell — me I” he laughed. “If my desired in- 
spiration would only crash into this brain of 
mine. I’d sleep better, for that pathetic little 
fellow must not be hazed ! I’ve got to make 
good for Theophilus’ sake, but how? Oh, 


25 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


well, I’ll sleep on it, and the inspiration will 
surely come, as it always does — I’ll save my- 
self, too, for the Sophomores will want to 
haze me properly !” 

It was the next evening, after supper, as 
the collegians came from the dining-room, 
that T. Hicks, behind some Sophomores, 
caught a stray remark that made his heart 
throb with sudden joy — the great “inspira- 
tion” had flashed on his mind! Without 
standing on the order of his going, the tooth- 
pick Freshman pushed through the wrathful 
second-year students, dashed across the 
Quadrangle, and rushed up to his room in 
Creighton Hall. 

Seizing a pen, he wrote swiftly for ten 
minutes, under the spell of his inspiration, 
and then he settled himself to copy with ex- 
treme care what he had composed, revising 
it as he went along. When this task was 
26 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


ended, in a clear, legible hand, he read 
the document, his cherubic countenance 
wreathed in smiles. 

“Theophilus Opperdyke is saved!” he an- 
nounced to his friend Napoleon as he arose, 
‘T have boundless faith in my inspirations, 
and I am going to trust in this brilliant one. 
Now — ^let us see what courage the bragging 
Sophomores possess !” 

By the entrance to the Gymnasium hung a 
bulletin board, on which were posted official 
athletic notices, posters of contests, team cap- 
tains’ lists of successful candidates, or any- 
thing else that was intended for the notice 
of the collegians. Quite a number of upper- 
classmen were reading an exhortation by 
Coach Corridan for more football material, 
as T. Hicks strode up, while on the Senior 
fence a group sat and sang college songs 
melodiously. 


27 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

Without a word, the Freshman, with the 
aid of several tacks that were in the board, 
posted the document he had written, and not 
waiting to hear the excited comments of the 
throng, he hurried back to his room, from the 
window of which he watched the sensation 
his act created. 

“Fellows!” shouted “Pud” Holloway, a 
Junior, who first read the document. “Come 
here, everybody, and read it ! Where is Jack 
Merritt? Read — read!” 

Seniors, Juniors, and Sophomores, with a 
few timid Freshmen, crowded up to the bul- 
letin board, and scanned the notice eagerly; 
there, in a clear, flowing handwriting, was a 
“Defi to the Sophomore Class,” signed at 
the bottom with the bold signature of “T. 
Hicks, Freshman.” It read: 

I, T. Hicks, know enough of college tra- 
dition to realize that Freshmen and Sopho- 


28 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


mores are sworn enemies — I grant that by 
sheer physical power, I can never prevent 
the Sophomores from hazing me — and The- 
ophilus Opperdyke. But I will match my 
brains against those of Jack Merritt, their 
leader, on the condition that if I outwit him, 
both Theophilus Opperdyke and myself are 
to be immune from any hazing whatsoever, 
for all time. If the brave Sophomores have 
any brains, I defy them to accept the follow- 
ing challenge, and if they refuse, it is a con- 
fession that they do not possess the necessary 
gray matter! 

On Friday night, at midnight, September 
the twenty-fifth, the Sophomore hazers are 
to enter the room of T. Hicks, 325 Creighton 
Hall, for the avowed purpose of administer- 
ing to him a thorough hazing. By his sig- 
nature, hereto appended, T. Hicks promises 
to be in his room. He allows the Sophomores 
to place any number of guards at the door, 
and the hazers may come in any number also. 
T. Hicks agrees that the door may be closed 
and locked when the hazers are inside, and 
the guards are placed in the corridor outside. 

T. Hicks is to be given one minute after 
the door is locked, in which not a move to- 
ward him must be made; he will not have 


29 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


any weapons, or throw anything into the haz- 
ers’ eyes. Under these conditions, as above 
written, T, Hicks agrees to escape from that 
room, and to stay escaped from the hazers 
until 2 A.M. If T. Hicks succeeds, under the 
terms imposed, in escaping and remaining 
escaped until the time named, the Sophomore 
Class pledges itself to extend full immunity 
from hazing of any description whatsoever 
to the aforesaid T. Hicks and Theophilus Op- 
perdyke. Freshmen, for the rest of the year. 

By their signatures, the Sophomores here- 
by agree to T. Hicks’ proposition, and by his 
signature, T. Hicks agrees to make the es- 
cape as above outlined. 

Signed, T. Hicks, Freshman. 

For the Sophomore Qass : 

The defi caused the wildest sort of a sen- 
sation on the Bannister campus, and in the 
dormitories; Jack Merritt and the other 
Sophomores were joyously escorted to the 
bulletin board by riotous Juniors and Seniors, 
and made to read the challenge, after which 
they immediately went into secret conclave. 


30 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


Every few moments some collegians who had 
just heard of the document sprinted over to 
the Gymnasium, and shouted in glee, or if 
they were Sophomores, walked slowly away. 

“They’ve got to sign it!” prophesied the 
Seniors and Juniors, who remembered their 
class rivalry of three years before. “This 
T. Hicks has got them up against a wall, and 
Jack Merritt must accept the challenge, or be 
the joke of Bannister! And why shouldn’t 
the Sophs sign it? The thing is utterly im- 
possible — this T. Hicks can never escape 
from thirty hazers, in a room with the doors 
locked, and guards posted in the corridor out- 
side!” 

This opinion was evidently shared by the 
Freshmen themselves, for at nine o’clock that 
night a much-wrought-up delegation, headed 
by an angry Butch Brewster, invaded the 
sanctum of the courageous T. Hicks. Be- 


31 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


sides the leader, there was “Cherub” Chal- 
loner, a rotund youth, “Billy” Harnsworth, 
“Don” Carterson, “Chub” Chalmers, an- 
other innocent-looking student, and “Patrick 
Henry” McGarrity, a small but oratorical 
Freshman. 

“Hicks !” urged Butch wrathfully. “What 
is this wild thing you have done, anyway? 
Have you no class spirit? For the sake of 
’19, for the class honor, tear down that rash 
statement, and abandon such a weird plan! 
Not even Houdini himself could escape from 
this room under the conditions you have im- 
posed on yourself I Don’t make your class 
the joke of the campus, and expose us to 
ridicule I” 

T. Hicks, who had draped his slender form 
gracefully on the radiator, regarded the in- 
tensely serious delegation quizzically, and 
then responded, with his cheery smile ; 


32 


HICKS POSTS A DEFI 


“Fellows, we Freshmen aren’t well ac- 
quainted yet, but when you know T. Hicks 
better, you will have faith in his inspirations. 
I have a vivid one at present, and I’ll succeed, 
never fear! Brains, my comrades of ’19, 
will always win, especially against the class 
of ’ 18 1 Don’t worry — retire to sweet repose, 
and leave it to me 1” 

In vain Butch threatened. Cherub raged, 
Don argued, Billy plead. Chub implored, and 
Patrick Henry delivered stirring orations; 
the debonair, blithesome T. Hicks was as im- 
movable as Gibraltar, and confident in his 
power to make good the rash vow. Finally 
his classmates, despairing, gave up the fight, 
and filed out as solemnly as they had entered, 
and more sadly. 

“Nothing is impossible to a fellow with 
inspirations 1 ” Hicks flung after them cheer- 
fully. “Just keep awake Friday night, and 


33 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


listen to the baffled Sophomores, about 
twelve-five a.m. !” 

When the six-thirty rising-bell awoke the 
Bannister collegians from slumber the next 
morning, little time was lost by the quick 
dressers in hurrying over to the bulletin 
board by the Gymnasium door ; one look, and 
“Ricks” McFadden, an excitable Junior, 
shouted wildly : 

“Hicks must escape, fellows, for the Sophs 
have signed!” 

It was true, for below Hicks’ name was 
written — “Signed for — and by vote of — the 
Class of 1918,” and followed, in various 
scrawls, the names : 

“John Hollingsworth Merritt, President. 
Richard Babbington McCabe, Secretary, 
William DeFord Hughes, Sergeant-at- 
Arms, Class of ’18.” 


Ill 

HICKS AND THE HAZERS 

T here was but Httle studying done at 
Bannister College on the twenty-fifth 
of September, for the excited collegians were 
far less interested in the exploits of Julius 
Caesar, or the final outcome of baffling alge- 
bra problems, than in wondering if T. Hicks 
really would escape. The strange defi was 
read by the students at all hours, and the in- 
variable conclusion was : “He can’t escape — 
it is impossible !” 

The mysterious T. Hicks, now the most 
important individual in college, calmly went 


35 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


his care-free, unconcerned way, seemingly 
totally unaware that he had created a mighty 
sensation. Because of his self-possession, 
and the terms of his challenge, certain wild 
rumors went about the campus and the dor- 
mitories : 

“He is a son of a famous Handcuff King !” 
avowed “Bucky” Turner, a Sophomore, in all 
earnestness. “A man who can escape from 
any cell, take off all handcuffs or leg-irons 
put on him, or get out of a room with any 
kind of locks on the door! His father has 
taught him ” 

“To push his way through about thirty 
Sophomores,” rejoined “Bob” Pendleton, a 
Senior, with mild sarcasm. “Calmly shove 
the inside guards out of his way, and after he 
opens the locked door, get by more fellows in 
the corridor !” 

To the final conclusion that “We don’t 
36 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


know who he is, or how he intends to escape, 
but we are sure he won’t,” came every col- 
legian, and the Freshmen despairingly 
awaited the ridicule that would be heaped 
upon Hicks’ devoted head, sliding off on 
those of the entire first-year class, when his 
sensational defi ended in a mighty failure. 

At eleven-thirty that night, the reckless 
Freshman who had caused such a furor at 
Bannister so soon after his arrival, donned a 
football sweater, light trousers, and rubber- 
soled “sneaks,” and placidly sat down at his 
study- table. To prove just how worried he 
really was, he actually got the right answer 
to a knotty algebra problem that had puzzled 
the Math class that afternoon. 

“The hour approacheth !” he laughed 
softly, as he heard windows being raised in 
Smithson, over in Nordyke, the Junior dormi- 
tory, and even in Bannister Hall, where the 
37 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


dignified Seniors dwelt. As the four dormi- 
tory buildings were built facing an open 
court, called the “Quad,” the upper-classmen 
had a complete view of Hicks, and the room 
from which he would make his escape — if he 
succeeded. 

Promptly at midnight, shattering the omi- 
nous silence of the hour, a tremendous uproar 
sounded in the corridor outside — the stamp- 
ing of many feet, the deep growling of as- 
sumed voices, and a terrific banging on the 
portals of Hicks’ room. 

“Doomed Freshrtian, open thy door !” thun- 
dered an awe-inspiring voice. “The Grand 
Order of Bannister Hazers will now proceed 
to punish thee for thine awful insult to the 
class of ’i8!” 

“How grand!” remarked the bean-pole 
Hicks, as he pulled the string that ran from 
the wall above the study-table, over to the 

38 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


door-knob, where it was so arranged that the 
portal could be opened by a student across 
the room. “Do come in, Messrs. Ghosts, 
and put me in good spirits !” 

The lights of the other dormitories, and in 
the corridor and rooms of the third floor of 
Creighton were out, so that when the door 
swung open, T. Hicks saw a horde of sheeted, 
masked figures outside — ghostly and terrify- 
ing in their silence. The masks were pillow 
cases drawn over their heads, with openings 
cut for eyes, nose, and mouth — a few were 
horribly decorated in red, and Hicks sur- 
mised that these were the leaders. 

The hazers, nearly thirty in number, filed 
silently into the room of the doomed Fresh- 
man, and found T. Hicks standing calmly be- 
hind the study-table, which was between him- 
self and the invaders, while directly before 
him the electric light bulb swung at the end 


4 


39 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


of its cord. Though he knew that from the 
windows of the other dormitories he was be- 
ing watched with breathless interest, the 
blithesome youth grinned as cheerfully as 
ever. 

One of the sheeted figures, whom the smil- 
ing victim knew must be Jack Merritt, since 
he was addressed by the others as “Grand 
Mogul,” gave orders in a deep, sepulchral 
tone: 

“Chief Guardian of the Portal, and Assist- 
ants three — ^guard outside the door ! Worthy 
Grand Potentate — close and lock the portal ! 
Let everyone keep silence! Doomed Fresh- 
man, hast thou aught to say before thou 
meetest thy terrible Fate?” 

“If I have not,” responded the grinning 
Hicks, on whom all this terrible dignity 
seemed wasted, “it will be the very first time 
I was ever at a loss for something to say! 

40 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


Sure, Grand Piano, I could talk for hours, 
but this will suffice — ^by the terms of the defi, 
I have a minute of grace, before you start 
your longer period of disgrace. Get your 
watch ready, and when I say ‘go!’ count a 
minute before you make a move! I am 
ready — Go!” 

Like a flash, he seized the electric light 
bulb and swung it violently against the wall, 
so that it was smashed, and the room plunged 
into utter darkness! In the intense gloom, 
it was impossible to see anything, and several 
hazers moved restlessly, but Jack Merritt — 
the Grand Mogul — was honorable and he 
shouted : 

“Stand still — someone strike a match ! 
Hurry — has no one a match, so I can see the 
watch ? I am counting the seconds as they 
tick off — fifty — fifty-one — ^has no one a 
match ? There, call it a minute, and tell the 
41 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Guards outside to bring a light bulb from the 
corridor, and slip it in through a crack of the 
door!” 

The Chief Guardian, in the corridor, un- 
screwed the light bulb, which the Sophomores 
themselves had turned off, to make things 
dark and ominous, and passed it in through 
the slightly opened door to the Worthy Grand 
Potentate, Heavy Hughes, who locked the 
door again before giving the bulb to the 
Grand Mogul. The whole operation had 
given T. Hicks one extra minute, and Jack 
Merritt exclaimed triumphantly as he 
screwed the bulb into the socket : 

“There! Hicks has not escaped, for the 
door was guarded well, and opened but three 
inches, then locked again. Now ” 

The light flashed up, illuminating the room 
to every corner, and blinding the sheeted, 
masked forms for an instant. Every head 


42 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


was turned toward the study-table, behind 
which the Freshman had stood when he 
smashed the electric light bulb. 

T. Hicks had utterly and mysteriously dis- 
appeared ! 

“Here — what’s this?” the startled Grand 
Mogul seized a huge placard, lying on the 
table, and the bewildered hazers read, printed 
in large, black letters : 

I HAVE ESCAPED! 

ROOMS HAVE WINDOWS AS WELL AS DOORS! 

YOU HAVE TWO HOURS TO FIND ME. 

GET BUSY 

HICKS. 

“He has escaped!” roared the Grand 
Mogul, throwing down the card angrily and 
looking under the table. “Wait — don’t get 
panic-stricken — we must hold a council of 
war ! Anyone with suggestions address the 


43 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Grand Mogul — no names must be spoken — 
and offer them quickly ! Now ” 

“Grand Mogul!” An excited member of 
the sheeted, masked ghosts pushed his way to 
the open window back of the study-table. 
“Look — the window is wide open — Hicks is a 
very light fellow — why couldn’t two big, 
strong Freshmen like Butch Brewster have 
stood on the sill of the window below this one 
and easily have caught Hicks, and pulled him 
into the room under this ?” 

“It must be the way he escaped !” howled 
the Grand Mogul, throwing subterfuge and 
his mask away, and emerging as an angry, 
baffled Jack Merritt. “Why did we not 
notice that Hicks, in his defi, made no men- 
tion of the windows being guarded? You 
are right — ^he could slide over the sill in two 
seconds, and two Freshmen like Brewster 
could stand on the window ledge below, and 


44 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


easily get Hicks into the room ! Everybody 
out — after him! To the room under this — 
quick ” 

The Chief Guardian and Assistants three 
were upset by the wild exodus of panic- 
stricken hazers from the room of T. Hicks, 
who had made good his seemingly rash prom- 
ise by escaping in less than one minute after 
the Sophomores had closed and locked the 
door ! If he could succeed in remaining es- 
caped for two hours, while the second-year 
collegians searched campus, dormitories, and 
even downtown for him, the mysterious 
T. Hicks would be the hero of Bannister, 
and the idol of his class ! 

Hurriedly, the Grand Mogul named sep- 
arate details of hazers to search in various 
parts, and warned them to remain masked, 
so that the Freshmen might not recognize 
them when their rooms were entered, to seek 
45 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


the fugitive Freshman. The room of the 
daring Hicks was ransacked, in every crev- 
ice, but the toothpick Freshman was not 
hidden away — ^beyond a doubt, he had 
escaped ! 

It was a desperate throng of Sophomores 
that poured from the room — ghostly figures 
hunted in every Freshman room, so quickly 
in Opperdyke’s that he had no time to be 
alarmed before they were out again, for even 
a youth as slender as T. Hicks could not 
have hid in a Bannister room. The ghosts 
scattered over the campus, on the athletic 
field, behind the dormitories and college 
buildings, and one squad, doffing disguises, 
sprinted downtown to seek the mysteriously 
disappeared Hicks. 

By this time, the hilarious upper-classmen 
were fully aware that, despite the utterly im- 
possible conditions by which he had been 
46 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


bound, the blithesome Freshman had es- 
caped from the room, with thirty hazers in- 
side the locked door, and three guards in the 
corridor ! So sure was Jack Merritt and his 
aides that Hicks had escaped by the way sug- 
gested — that of sliding over the window sill 
into the arms of two strong Freshmen below, 
that the Sophomore president collapsed when 
“Dad” Rogers, a Senior, protested: 

“No one came from Hicks’ window. Jack 
— it is impossible! If you don’t believe it, 
look, what is under Hicks’ window, fellows ?” 

Jack Merritt looked, for the light shone 
from Hicks’ room now, and he gasped with 
sheer amazement; the truth of Dad’s state- 
ment was proven by what he saw, for in his 
frantic haste, he had quite forgotten that di- 
rectly beneath Hicks’ window was a blank 
wall! Below that Freshman’s room on the 
third floor of Creighton, being the end room. 


47 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


there were no windows, all the way to the 
ground ! 

The resourceful Sophomore leader felt 
weak and helpless as he saw the laurels 
gained in his Freshman year slipping from 
his grasp. The theory of the escape by way 
of the window was an exploded one now, and 
how T. Hicks had gotten from the room was 
all the more mysterious! Had he calmly 
pushed out a section of the wall, or passed 
through the ceiling to the roof ? 

“There is nothing we can do, fellows,” he 
confessed, as the hazers returned by twos 
and threes from their futile quest of Hicks. 
“Search until two o’clock, and then meet in 
my room. It seems that — that this Fresh- 
man has outwitted me, after all, and earned 
immunity for himself and Opperdyke. I 
don’t mind losing Theophilus, but not to be 
able to haze Hicks after this — it is terrible I” 
48 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


At two o’clock, a discouraged, gloomy as- 
semblage of Sophomore hazers met in Jack 
Merritt’s room in Smithson, and a very much 
elated and riotous gathering of Juniors and 
Seniors filled the corridor outside, while the 
aroused Freshmen, jubilant at the glad news 
that T. Hicks had actually escaped from room 
325, Creighton Hall, and was still missing 
at two A.M., shouted their joy from their 
windows. 

“Five after,” said Babe McCabe, consult- 
ing his watch, for he, with several others, had 
torn off their pillow-case masks, “Why 
doesn’t he show up, I wonder ?” 

A sheeted, masked figure stepped out from 
among those who had not removed their dis- 
guises, and in the voice of the one who had 
suggested the escape by the window route, 
spoke : 

“It is now two o’clock, isn’t it? By the 


49 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


signatures of the Sophomores representing 
the class of ’i8, on the class honor, T. Hicks 
has fulfilled the conditions of the defi, and 
won immunity from hazing for himself and 
Theophilus Opperdyke ?” 

“That is too true,” admitted Jack, sadly. 
“But where is T. Hicks ?” 

“Here!” The mask was cast aside, the 
sheet discarded, and before the stunned col- 
legians stood — T. Hicks! With his inevi- 
table cheerful grin, the lathe-like Freshman 
enjoyed the discomfiture and bewilderment 
of the Sophomores, and bowed to the ap- 
plause of the upper-classmen in the hall. 

“Would you mind — telling us,” begged the 
wilted Grand Mogul, “now that you can’t be 
hazed — how in the world you managed it? 
You were the one who led us astray on the 
window route, and — Oh, I see it all 
now ” 


SO 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


“Too late, Grand Opera!” grinned T. 
Hicks, pleasantly. “Hear, then, an illus- 
trated lecture on ‘The Escape of T, Hicks 
from the Hazers of Bannister’! A day or 
so ago, before I posted what all believed to be 
a ridiculous defi, I overheard some Sophs 
mention that they must get their sheets and 
pillow-case masks ready. I learned that all 
hazers at Bannister wear this simple yet awe- 
some disguise, and then 

“I had my inspiration ! By the wording of 
my defi, I made it seem that by some wildly 
sensational method, I would escape, and I 
had you fellows half-expecting me to fade 
through the wall, or ooze through the key- 
hole ! The fact that I allowed such elaborate 
precautions of guards and locked doors put 
you on your guard for something marvelous, 
and you didn’t know what to expect, but you 
felt sure it would be miraculous. Therefore, 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


a very simple expedient took you by surprise ! 

“I believed I would be safest in your midst 
— one of thirty, more or less, all alike ; I had 
a sheet and a pillow-case mask, under the bed, 
at hand, and with a minute of grace after I 
unexpectedly smashed the light, I got into the 
disguise in about ten seconds, and quietly 
mingled with the hazers, who did move in the 
dark, after all. When light came, I was one 
of the crowd, all alike, and you believed I 
had escaped. 

“Yet, there was the peril that some one 
might have an inspiration, as I did, and as I 
had mentioned the window on the card, which 
was prepared before, in an assumed voice I 
pointed out what might have been a plausible 
way of escape, had there been a window di- 
rectly below mine ! 

“In your panic, you forgot there was none, 
and you rushed out, believing I was hurry- 


52 


HICKS AND THE HAZERS 


ing from the room below, to get hidden ; then, 
with your own aid, I made my escape from 
the room, for when the exodus began, I was 
really carried out by main force, so you made 
me escape! I gleefully hunted for myself 
for an hour, and then followed Jack Merritt, 
the Grand Mogul, around until two o’clock. 
At any time after one, he could have reached 
out and seized me, thus causing me to lose 
out, and get hazed as hard as — you’d like to 
haze me now I” 

The collegians, inside the room, and in 
the corridor, gasped their amazement at the 
sheer audacity of the affair, as simple in its 
execution as it could be. As Hicks had ex- 
pected, his impressive defi, with its elaborate 
conditions of the locked door, and the guards 
outside, had led the hazers to expect a 
stupendous move, such as hypnotizing the 
entire band, and then, by an absurdly simple 
S3 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


act, he had become one of them, and was 
pushed from the room by their mad rush ! 

“But,” queried Dad Rogers, who had 
followed to see the denouement of the affair, 
“were you not afraid, Hicks, that your in- 
spiration might fail ?” 

“My inspirations never fail, responded 
the blithesome T. Hicks, with a confidence 
that was bewildering. “And I never work 
unless I have one. Of course, against col- 
legians with brains, now, I would never have 
thought of trying to make such an escape, 
but against Sophomores ” 


ENTER — ^T. HAVILAND HICKS, JR.! 

T hicks, from an humble, insignifi- 
• cant Freshman, scorned, as a matter 
of campus tradition, by the upper-classmen, 
had in two brief hours climbed the ladder 
of Fame from the depths of obscurity, and 
perched serenely on the top rung! 

By his defi he had aroused the interest of 
the Bannister collegians, and his exploit in 
making his escape under seemingly impos- 
sible conditions had caused him to become 
a campus celebrity. Not even the glory 
achieved by the eleven on Saturday, in win- 
5 55 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


ning for the Gold and Green from a heavier, 
faster team, dimmed 'the luster of the che- 
rubic Freshman’s name. 

Yet, with his feat talked of everywhere, 
and the momentous question of the hour, 
“Who is Hicks ?” echoing on the campus, in 
the classrooms, and through the dormitories, 
he wisely confined his exultation to the soli- 
tude of his room, and was extremely modest 
elsewhere — thus he kept the good opinion 
of the Juniors and Seniors, a strategic move, 
as they were not in honor bound to withhold 
from hazing him, if he needed it. 

One night, a week later, several of the 
Freshmen, following what had become a 
habit, drifted into T. Hicks’ room before the 
seven o’clock study bell rang. Because of 
his inevitable good-nature, his queer, enter- 
taining speech, and his generous disposition, 
he was already extremely popular with his 
S6 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


class, and they made his room a rendezvous, 
despite its bleak and cheerless appearance. 

Besides Butch, who came across the cor- 
ridor, there was Chub, Don, Cherub, “Tug” 
Warren, a jolly Freshman, and a shiftless, 
lack-luster youth whom the entire campus 
called “Hooligan” Hughes — in no way re- 
lated to Heavy, of football fame; of course, 
Theophilus Opperdyke was there, for he 
made an idol of the blithesome Hicks who 
had so miraculously saved him from hazing I 

“We have outwitted the Sophomores in the 
first round,” spoke Hicks, seriously, for him, 
and generously including them all in the vic- 
tory his inspiration had won. “But the year 
had just started — we must annex the class 
rush, the Sophomore-Freshman football 
game, find out their colors before Color Day, 
and ” 

“In brief, win everything!” laughed Tug. 


57 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“But say, fellows, we have got to get to- 
gether, elect a leader — since we are not al- 
lowed class officers — and organize definitely 
against the Sophs. I think most of the 
Freshmen want Hicks to lead us, but there 
are a few aristocratic chaps who haven’t 

gotten acquainted with him yet, and- ” 

A sharp knock sounded, and the hospitable 
T. Hicks looked horrified at finding the door 
shut, probably by one of the thoughtless 
Freshmen. 

“Open up. Butch!” he urged. “My door 
should never be closed, for my room, such as 
it is to behold, is always open house to all 1” 
Butch, on the bed near the door, lazily 
stretched out his arm and opened it, and dis- 
closed, standing hesitatingly in the corridor, 
three students of the Freshman class who 
roomed in exclusive luxury, over in “Nobs 
Hill,” as that end of Creighton was known 
58 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


where the rooms, being larger and more de- 
sirable, were usually taken by the first-year 
students whose fathers were wealthy, and 
could afford to pay the extra expense, thus 
creating a campus aristocracy. 

“Tobe” Lawless, an overbearing youth, 
wore a costly sweater, which the athletic 
Butch scowled upon, as Tobe’s prowess as an 
athlete consisted of arranging the pillows in 
his cozy-corner; Kingdon — called “K.” 
Smith — was a fashion-plate of late styles in 
clothes and haberdashery ; Jose Marquette, a 
swarthy student, the son of a rich Cuban 
planter, formed the third of the Nobs Hill 
triumvirate that had condescended to visit 
T. Hicks. 

The process of logic by which these young 
aristocrats decided they should make the call 
on their classmate was this — an hour before, 
as they talked in Tobe’s room, which had car- 


59 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


pet, soft tiger-skin rugs, a davenport, and 
easy chairs, with posters on the walls, K had 
remarked on the sudden leap to fame of 
T. Hicks, their classmate. 

“Perhaps we had better look him up,” 
suggested Tobe. “He must be worth while, 
to outwit Jack Merritt so cleverly, and maybe 
he will be a good member of our set ! If he 
is somebody, K., get him to move over to 
Nobs Hill, and room with you !” 

“Good!” assented K., whose standard by 
which a student was judged to be “some- 
body” and worth while was the same as 
Tobe’s — he must be rich, haughty toward 
poor collegians, exclusive in his circle of 
friends, and ready to acknowledge as his 
chums only the wealthy classmates, or upper- 
classmen, for some of the latter belonged to 
Lawless’ set. 

Hence, the unexpected voyage of discovery 
6o 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


to the humble room of T. Hicks, which was 
not in Nobs Hill — named after the famous 
San Francisco millionaires’ colony. 

“Come right in, fellows I” called the 
friendly Hicks, who, though he recognized 
this trio as being haughty and snobbish, 
would have urged an Ambassador Extraor- 
dinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to King 
George’s Court to enter his room. “Let’s get 
acquainted — meet some of your classmates 
— the better to organize against the Sopho- 
mores. As the man said when he ordered 
sausage in a German restaurant — we must 
prepare for the ‘wurst’ 1” 

The Nobs Hill Freshmen stood in the door- 
way — stunned! Instead. of what they had 
confidently expected of T. Hicks, the famous 
— a luxuriously furnished and fixed-up den, 
with soft rugs under foot, easy chairs, and 
expensive posters and pictures adorning the 

6i 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


walls, they beheld — a bare, uninviting room, 
uncarpeted, no rugs or easy chairs, and only 
one picture — “Napoleon’s Retreat from 
Moscow” ! 

“I guess — not!” sneered Tobe Lawless. 
“It really isn’t worth while — “by this, he 
meant plainly that Hicks was not — “We must 
be going, K. !” 

“Why,” marveled the Cuban, who made 
no secret of his disappointment, “ees thees 
the famous Hicks? He ees talked of as 
Freshman leader — we don’t want a poor fel- 
low to lead us, and he ees poor !” 

“Come !” urged K. Smith haughtily. “We 
really don’t belong here, you know, Tobe — 
he won’t do for our set! We thought that 
perhaps this much-talked-of T. Hicks was 
somebody, but we are wrong. Sorry to have 
troubled you — good night !” 

There was silence after the door closed on 
62 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


the three snobbish Freshmen from Nobs Hill ; 
Butch clenched his hands wrathfully, Tug 
bristled up in a pugnacious manner, Don and 
Cherub exchanged glances, Chub and the 
listless Hooligan exclaimed in anger, and 
little Theophilus quivered with rage at the 
slight offered his hero, but the scorned 
T. Hicks grinned cheerfully. 

“There now!” he exclaimed delightedly. 
“Will you be good, Hicks? I suppose I 
should feel crushed, fellows, and declare that 
life can offer me no joy and gladness, denied 
as I am the pleasure of that trio’s society! 
However, I actually believe I shall survive 
this terrible blow, and thus not cast a lasting 
sorrow on the world because of my untimely 
demise !” 

Big, good-natured Butch Brewster, better 
than any other collegian at Bannister, had 
come to know this care-free, heedless Hicks, 

63 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


and being across the corridor, the two Fresh- 
men had become firm friends. The football 
hero found that T. Hicks, despite his frivo- 
lous speech and blithesome manner, was 
warm-hearted, generous, and impulsive, eas- 
ily moved to sympathy — as in the case of 
Theophilus — and ready to sacrifice cheerfully 
for his comrades. 

Butch knew the slender, smiling Freshman 
would make a loyal friend, and that for all his 
quaint confidence, and love of a dramatic 
climax, Hicks was actually happiest when 
doing something for a chum. As the 
shadowy youth had confided to his classmate, 
in his usual blithesome fashion, after the es- 
cape from the hazers : 

‘T wouldn’t have minded failing, for my- 
self, Butch!” he declared earnestly. “With 
my Herculean frame, massive chest, and 
brawny arms, I could have stood the hazing, 
64 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


but I thought of poor little Theophilus, and 
I just had to succeed !” 

So Butch was wrathful at the action of 
the haughty Freshmen, and he paced the floor 
wildly. 

“Look here, Hicks,” he paused before the 
grinning youth, “don’t you mind what those 
snobs say ! We fellows here know that you 
are a good-hearted fellow, a firm friend, and 
full of class and college spirit! We don’t 
care — so far as we are concerned — if you 
haven’t a cent in the world ! The friendship 
of such cads as those is not worth having, and 
you are better off without it ! We take you 
for yourself, and if you want us as your 
chums, we’ll stick by you — we want you to 
lead us, and here’s my hand on it !” 

“Right!” Chub exploded, and the others 
followed Butch’s example, crowding up to 
shake hands on the pact of friendship. They 
65 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


beheld a miracle — ^T. Hicks, the debonair, the 
blithesome, was so overcome with emotion 
that he could not speak — he, T. Hicks, actu- 
ally could not say a word! He could only 
wring Butch’s hand heartily, and pat Chub 
on the shoulder, while he struggled to find 
utterance. 

“Thank you, fellows !” he said at last, and 
his smile beamed forth. “But I have a tri- 
fling surprise for those three chaps, who are 
too good to associate with us. Of course, I 
want every one of you for friends, and any 
fellow who sincerely wants my friendship can 
have it, and I’ll be as loyal a chum as I can ! 

“Now, my friends, I want to ask a great 
favor of you, to test your friendship — tomor- 
row, between the hours of four and seven, I 
don’t want one of you, or anyone else, to 
come to my room ! That is a strange request 
from a friend who pretends to keep open 
66 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


house, isn’t it? But I have a little surprise 
party in mind, and you can help me by stay- 
ing away until seven p.m., when you are all 
cordially invited !” 

The announcement that T. Hicks had an- 
other surprise on the way excited the Fresh- 
men, but they promised to keep it a secret, 
and to stay away from his room between the 
hours named. In truth, the first-year col- 
legians, and not a few upper-classmen, re- 
garded the splinter-like Freshman as a 
magician who could produce sensational sur- 
prises much after the fashion that a conjurer 
produces white rabbits from a high hat ! In 
this they were not far wrong! 

The study-hour bell ended the conclave, 
and the Freshmen hurried to their rooms to 
be in for the first inspection. Butch lingering 
behind again to urge T. Hicks not to feel 
hurt at the Nobs Hill trio’s attitude, some- 
67 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


thing which seemed highly improbable, from 
the joyous smile that adorned Hicks’ cherubic 
countenance. 

“Leave them to me, Butch !” he responded. 
“And be sure to come to my party tomorrow 
night at seven — Saturday, you know, and no 
study hour !” 

The seven Freshmen kept Hicks’ secret, so 
there was no excited interest on the campus, 
as in the case of the defi, but these collegians 
were intensely curious, and all the more be- 
wildered when, between four and six the next 
day, they heard a most terrific thumping and 
banging in Hicks’ room — the dragging of 
heavy things over the floor, and other noisy 
indications that Hicks was in the throes of a 
mighty industrial mood. 

After supper, as they came from the din- 
ing-room, Hicks requested of his friend, 
Butch : 


68 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


“Say, Butch, can you, with the aid of some 
husky Freshmen, drag that Nobs Hill trio 
to my room at seven o’clock? Try to per- 
suade them to come, if possible, but get them 
there, understand ? If you don’t mind being 

rude to the haughty creatures ” 

“They will be among those present!” 
promised Butch, grimly, and the festive 
Hicks went his way, content that the desired 
guests would attend his surprise party, even 
if Brewster had to drag each one there by the 
scruff of his neck. 

Promptly at seven, there was a terrific 
commotion in the corridor outside his room, 
and he opened the door, to find his guests, 
invited and otherwise, at the portal ; the ones 
who had been present the night before were 
there, and in addition, two big Freshmen of 
Hicks’ friendly circle — “Beef” McNaughton 
and “Pudge” Langdon — assisted Butch with 
69 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


the somewhat wrathful Lawless, Marquette, 
and K. Smith. 

‘'Here they are, Hicks!” panted Butch, 
who, with the others, believed that the slender 
Freshman wanted to wreak his vengeance 
on the trio, and that the nailing and banging 
had been on some instrument of torture. 
“We — why, what in the world, Hicks ” 

There was cause for bewilderment, shared 
by the others, and even the Nobs Hill three, 
freed as their captors’ nerveless hands re- 
leased them, stood still and gazed — Hicks’ 
room had undergone a wonderful transfor- 
mation 1 A rich, red carpet, deep and noise- 
less, covered the bare floors, several costly 
rugs were in sight, there were great, comfort- 
able armchairs, leather-covered and deeply 
padded, two luxurious davenports, with a 
riot of cushions, and some rockers. 

The walls were literally covered with pic- 


70 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


tures and posters of college life, boxing- 
gloves, tennis rackets, dueling rapiers 
crossed, everything in the athletic line, hung 
around the room, and occupying the place 
of honor between the two windows, was 
T. Hicks’ beloved banjo! 

The room of T. Hicks was by far the 
coziest and most luxuriously furnished “den” 
in all Bannister I 

“You see,” Hicks seemed not to notice their 
paralyzed attitudes, for they stood like 
marble statues. “I was afraid to fix the 
room up much, while there was a chance of 
the Sophs hazing me, and tearing up my 
room, so I stored this stuff in an empty room 
down the hall. But after I found I was im- 
mune from their night visits, I decided to 
have things cozy here, for my friends — 
dreadfully sorry I wasn’t ready for the Nobs 
Hill fellows last night ” 


6 


71 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“Hicks !” exploded ButcK. “What does it 
mean? Quit this chaffing and tell us, 


“It means this.” Hicks faced them sud- 
denly. “My Dad is rich — rich enough to 
buy and sell a dozen Lawlesses, Marquettes, 
and K. Smiths ! When I started to the Prep 
School, I made a fatal mistake; at once I 
fixed up my room as it is now, and made no 
secret of Dad’s wealth, though I did not boast 
of it. What was the result? I had a crowd 
of ‘friends,’ and to save me, I could not tell 
who were the true chums, and which the 
snobs, toadies, and sycophants* 

“I could not have predicted which would 
stick by me, and which turn coldly away, in 
case Dad lost his wealth, and I became poor. 
And understand me, there was danger that 
worthy, poor collegians would stay away 
from me because of my father’s money, and 
72 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


peril of misjudging some of my friends who 
had money, too, for they might have stayed 
with me in any case! I didn’t know if the 
poorer fellows flocked to me because of Dad, 
or if all the richer ones associated with me for 
that cause. I had some true friends, but I 
could not know them, or tell who liked me for 
myself! 

“So — I planned differently here at Ban- 
nister; I came as T. Hicks, and had a bare, 
cheerless room ; I made the collegians believe 
I was poor, and some were sure I would work 
my way. You fellows — my friends — didn’t 
care if I had a dollar or not, you wanted me 
for myself, though I am a useless creature! 
You came to my bleak room often, you as- 
sured me of your firm friendship when the 
Nobs Hill aristocrats decided I was beneath 
their notice ! 

“Now — my room is open house to my 


73 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN, 


friends, always, and everything I have is as 
much theirs as mine! I don’t want to be a 
snob, and I won’t — I’m going to be just the 
same as you found me before, when I seemed 
a poor chap, and grinds or athletes are wel- 
come here I I want my true friends — I knozv 
them here at Bannister — to make my room 
theirs, and if they hang back, they will have 
T. Hicks to reckon with I Wipe muddy feet 
on my rugs, even twang my beloved banjo — 
take my boxing-gloves and tennis rackets 
when you want them — loaf in here when I 
am out, just the same! 

“But as for this precious trio — well, if they 
want to come, all right, but I will not be ‘at 
home’ to them, and they don’t seem to care 
for our company, anyway, so they probably 
won’t care. You fellows who knew me as T. 
Hicks will find me a true, dependable friend 
always — of course, you may not like me as 


74 


ENTER— HICKS, JR.! 


much when you know me better, for I am a 
useless chap, and have nothing serious about 
me, but you had better spend most of your 

time in my room, or ” 

“Who — who are you, then?” demanded 
Tobe Lawless, weakly. “Who is — your 
father? We never heard of him — ^you’re 

just saying he can buy and sell ” 

“See that name?” T. Hicks had the col- 
lege catalogue, and the part containing the 
list of alumni. “That is my Dad! Think, 
Lawless, if you have ever heard of him.” 

For a moment — silence, then 

“ ‘Thomas Haviland Hicks, Sr. !’ ” read 
Butch Brewster. “Heard of him ! Bannis- 
ter’s greatest all-round athlete, the finest foot- 
ball player the Gold and Green ever had! 
Then — Yale’s famous star gridiron warrior, 
track star, and phenomenal baseball pitcher, 
one of the most wonderful athletes the Blue 


75 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


ever had! I guess we have heard of him, 
Hicks!” 

Slowly, it dawned on the wilted Nobs 
Hill triumvirate what a terrible blunder they 
had made ; in addition to what Butch had 
said, they remembered that Thomas Haviland 
Hicks, Sr., was a rich Pittsburgh steel mills 
owner, quite able, as the debonair Freshman 
had stated, to buy and sell a dozen men of 
their fathers’ financial standing. This fa- 
mous Bannister alumnus came to Commence- 
ments in his private car, and 

“Then you — ^you are — ” K. Smith faltered, 
but the vastly entertained Freshman finished 
the sentence for him 

“Yes, I am his son,” he said, smiling at 
their chagrin. “Exit — T. Hicks ; enter — 
Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr. !” 


V 

WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID OF HICKS 

O NE morning, two weeks after a butter- 
fly T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had gayly 
burst from the sober chrysalis of the plain 
“T. Hicks’ ” room and existence, the happy- 
go-lucky Freshman lounged in an easy chair 
in his cozy den; he was spending a study 
period most pleasurably — to himself at least 
— in making strenuous efforts to locate the 
“Lost Chord,” on his banjo, and as a result 
he found numerous discords whose where- 
abouts had better been kept a mystery. 

“Here you are!” growled Butch, who 


77 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


found it impossible to translate Latin to a 
banjo accompaniment, and who lumbered 
across the corridor wrathfully. “What has 
come over you, Hicks ? You are swiftly de- 
generating into a useless, pestersome, cam- 
pus-clogging pest! And I expected such 
great things of you, too! A fine specimen 
of humanity you are, to be talked of as class 
leader !” 

“I don’t want to be great, Butch!” pro- 
tested the sunny Hicks, making a hideously 
wrong selection of chords. “I don’t want to 
do great things, I don’t want to be class 
leader — I’d have to think too much! All I 
want, thou comrade of my youth, is just to 
exist — ^be happy, and to make others glad, if 
it isn’t too much bother for me !” 

No one who met the blithesome, irrepress- 
ible T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., since his dra- 
matic appearance as the son of Thomas Havi- 
78 



Making strenuous efforts to locate the ‘ Lost Chord.’ ” 
















WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


land Hicks, Sr., who owned several Pitts- 
burgh steel mills and traveled in a private 
car, could resist the scatter-brained Fresh- 
man. With his loyal, generous soul, his 
care-free, heedless disposition, and his demo- 
cratic spirit, he was rapidly becoming the 
most popular collegian at Bannister, and he 
a Freshman ! 

Indeed, to Butch’s loudly voiced disap- 
proval, though the big athlete admired his 
cheery companion vastly in secret, T. Havi- 
land Hicks, Jr., seemed utterly content to fol- 
low an existence made up mostly of banjo 
twanging, roaring songs at all hours, enter- 
taining his friends, and dragging his com- 
rades downtown to “Jerry’s,” a restaurant 
where the most luscious and juicy steaks 
could be had. To be in his cozy room, sur- 
rounded by a host of Freshmen who were 
enjoying themselves at his expense, often 
79 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


financial, was Hicks’ idea of supreme happi- 
ness! 

“But,” urged the earnest Butch, “college 
life is serious, Hicks, and you must not be- 
come frivolous I There are splendid chances 
for a fellow here at Bannister to be worth 
while, to do something big for himself, his 
class, and his alma mater! Have you no 
ambition? Don’t you want to stand high in 
the regard of your companions and the Fac- 
ulty? Or are your ideas so hazy ” 

“Nothing ‘hazy’ about me, or Theophilus !” 
interposed Hicks, gleefully. “Jack Merritt 
sadly confesses that. Butch ! I have a great 
ambition, but I must keep it a deep secret, 
and thirdly, I feel that no matter how hard I 
strive, I can never stand as high in anything 
as does our classmate, Ichabod ; I don’t ever 
intend to be serious, and so long as I don’t 
flunk a study, I am content!” 

8o 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


‘T suppose the remark about Ichabod is a 
joke!” spluttered the irate Butch, for the 
Freshman thus named by the students was 
as narrow as a splinter, and over six feet tall, 
hence the exquisite humor of Hicks’ refer- 
ence. “You fusser, you pillow-punishing, 
banjo-plunking tailor’s model — what earthly 
good are you to ’19? Your chief worry is 
to get clothes to fit that toothpick frame — 
you imagine life is an endless round of eating 
and singing — ^let me get my hands on you!” 

“Them’s harsh words. Butch!” chirped 
Hicks, grammatically, dodging toward the 
door as the big Freshman reached for him. 
“It is quoted. There is more pleasure in pur- 
suit than in possession,’ and as you seem to 
want me at present, enjoy the pursuit of my 
giant figure for a while !” 

Watching his chance, the shadowy Fresh- 
man dashed from the room, with the heavy 
81 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Butch in hot pursuit. All unwittingly, T. 
Haviland Hicks, Jr., was about to illustrate 
one of his own quotations sayings, and per- 
form the acrobatic feat of jumping from the 
frying-pan into the fire ! 

For days the enmity between the under- 
classmen, long smoldering, had been fanned 
to a blaze by the upper-classmen; it showed 
itself in dark looks, muttered words, scowls, 
pushings and jostlings on the way from the 
dining-hall, and trifling encounters between 
detached fragments of the rival classes. As 
yet, there had been no open conflict, and the 
Freshmen as a body had not attempted re- 
prisal for the hazings inflicted on them by 
Jack Merritt and his classmates. 

But war clouds gathered — even as Butch 
remonstrated with the care-free Hicks, the 
rash act of an excitable little Freshman, 
“Skeet” Wigglesworth, plunged Bannister 
82 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


into conflict, even as small Servia started the 
fracas in Europe ! 

This Freshman, impetuously wishing to 
imitate the famous Hicks, and gain some 
glory, all by his own mental efforts conceived 
the idea of hoisting a flag to the top of the 
campus flagpole. As the artistic design of 
this flamboyant pennant was markedly irri- 
tating to the Sophomores, it consisting of the 
class numerals, ’19, in red ink, in proper atti- 
tude, directly above those of ’18, in black ink 
and upside down, with the red words — 
“Down with the Sophomores!” for good 
measure, that class, when it came from reci- 
tation, was naturally as upset as their nu- 
merals. 

“This way — Sophomores ! This way — 
’18!” was the shout, and Seniors aided them 
to form for the rush, as a crowd of Freshmen, 
scared and uncertain, yet feeling they must 

83 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

not let the flag come down, had gathered 
before the flagpole. The Juniors, traditional 
friends of the first-year class, poured from 
their dormitory, calling loudly: 

“This way, Freshmen! Freshmen — this 
way! Over here, T9!” 

The Freshmen, generally speaking, were 
badly frightened, though in Beef McNaugh- 
ton. Pudge Langdon, and the missing Butch 
Brewster they had a trio that outweighed 
Jack Merritt, Heavy Hughes, and Babe Mc- 
Cabe; the knowledge that they zvere Fresh- 
men depressed them, they were inexperienced 
in class rushes, whereas their enemy had been 
through one, in their first year. 

But the Juniors formed them in solid for- 
mation before the flagpole, with the heavier 
and more athletic Freshmen in front, and 
urged them to fight for the honor of their 
class! A hundred yards away the angry 
84 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


Sophomores, thirsty for revenge, prepared to 
rush the trembling first-year collegians, and 
when the two lines met, the fray would be on ! 

It was at this crisis, when the Freshmen, 
despite their leaders’ and the Juniors’ frantic 
appeals for class spirit, were about to break 
ranks and flee, that the fugitive Hicks, 
closely pursued by the wrathful Butch, turned 
a corner of Creighton and sprinted into view. 
Before he was aware of the warring fac- 
tions, the slim Freshman was in a 
trap — the Sophomores were in front of 
him, his classmates behind him, the Gymna- 
sium to his left, and the opening through 
which he and Butch had fled had closed up 
with the joyous upper-classmen! 

The Bannister Weekly afterwards pub- 
lished a thrilling epic of the famous Sopho- 
more-Freshman class rush, and the poet 
wrote : 


85 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Upper-classmen to the right of him ! 

The Gym to the left of him ! 

Freshmen behind him and Sophs in front of him — 
Shouted and thundered ! 

T. Haviland Hicks, out of breath — 

Bewildered, half-scared to death — 

Into the terrible trap. 

Foolishly blundered ! 


It is a matter of history that the presence 
of John Hunyady, the famous Hungarian 
general whose prowess saved Europe from 
the Turks, was so powerful a stimulant to his 
troops and such a terrible spectacle to the 
Moslem hordes that his sudden appearance 
on the battlefield could put the enemy to 
rout! Once an aide who resembled Hun- 
yady put on his chief’s armor, sallied forth, 
coming unexpectedly into view, and by his 
resemblance to the terrible general, the vic- 
tory was won 1 

History repeated itself in the Freshman- 
86 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


Sophomore class rush at Bannister College. 
The panic-stricken Freshmen, about to flee in 
a panic, beheld the mighty T. Hicks, the 
Hicks who had outwitted the Sophomores 
and discomfited the great Jack Merritt! 
Waving his arms wildly, he was rushing be- 
fore them — surely, he must be urging them 
to follow him, to rush the Sophomores, and 
sweep them away like chaff I 

“Rah for Hicks !” shouted Skeet, the 
trouble-maker. “See, fellows — ^he leads us! 
Butch is with him — come on. Freshmen, 
Hicks will lead to victory !” 

To do T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., strict jus- 
tice, it must be stated that the alarmed Fresh- 
man had no more idea of leading his class 
against the enemy than he entertained of 
leading it in Mathematics or scholastic stand- 
ing. He became utterly panic-stricken at 
the suddenness by which Fate had pitch- 
7 87 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

forked him into this trap, and not knowing 
what else to do, he sprinted for the Sopho- 
more cohorts, hoping to escape through a 
narrow passage at their right. 

This closed, however, with howling spec- 
tators massing on the scene, and before the 
bewildered Hicks knew what had happened, 
he was caught between the two hostile forces, 
with the crowd of excited Freshmen at his 
heels, following him blindly into the fray! 
He could not stop, for their on-rush was irre- 
sistible, and to escape from either side was 
impossible, so he naturally did what was 
forced on him — ^he dashed headlong into the 
Sophomore leaders I 

It was a sort of tradition at Bannister, 
more from habit than anything else, that in 
the Freshman-Sophomore class rush, of 
which but one was allowed by campus law — 
this to take place at any time, the Freshmen 
88 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


should mass and wait for the second-year 
students to rush down on them. There was 
no rule to this effect, but as the Freshmen 
always wished earnestly to be somewhere 
else, no first-year class had ever actually 
started the rush. 

Hence, at the sudden appearance of T. 
Haviland Hicks, Jr., who was already famous 
for smashing traditions of all kinds, followed 
by the madly cheering Freshmen, who la- 
bored under the logical delusion that their 
hero led them into the fray, the Sophomores, 
in turn, were panic-stricken. Taken utterly 
by surprise, as they prepared to do the rush- 
ing, by the power of Hicks’ name which had 
on them the same effect as that of John Hun- 
yady on the Turks, they were disconcerted 
and bewildered. 

When the flying mass of Freshmen 
crashed into the waiting Sophomores, T. 

89 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Haviland Hicks, Jr., saw but one way to save 
himself, and frantically he took it, assisted 
by a violent shove from Butch, who really 
wanted to get at the other class leaders. The 
bean-pole Freshman dived head first, clutched 
the mighty Heavy Hughes about the knees, 
and wrapped his slim self around the big 
Sophomore, like a clinging vine around a 
sturdy oak. 

“Get off!” howled Heavy, attempting to 
stride forward against the foe. But his limbs 
being so clogged with Hicks’ anatomy, and 
the scared Freshman’s arms tightening in 
terror, he became top-heavy, and after 
toppling wildly a few seconds, he crashed to 
the ground, where he lay helpless, with Hicks 
using him as a buffer, and the Freshman 
horde pouring over them. 

“Heavy Hughes is down !” shrieked Beef, 
who was performing prodigies of valor 


90 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


against the foe. “Come on, Hughes is out — 
Hicks tackled and downed their best fighter 
— come on, you Freshmen!” 

Like the car of Juggernaut, the irresistible 
Freshman phalanx swept onward and for- 
ward, taking the unprepared Sophomores by 
storm, for the sight of the great Heavy, fall- 
ing like a tree uprooted in a gale, completely 
unnerved them. In vain J ack Merritt raged. 
Babe McCabe shouted encouragement — the 
second-year collegians were beaten already, 
by that strange thing called “psychology” — 
in this case, the faith of the Freshmen in T. 
Hicks, and their belief that he was leading 
them to victory, which he was, though with- 
out any definite purpose. 

Soon the great class rush had passed into 
history, and the battered Sophomores had 
left the campus, tattered, torn, and bruised — 
the insulting Freshman flag still fluttered to 


91 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


the breeze from the top of the flagpole, and 
— Sheet Wigglesworth was now a hero for 
having hoisted it ! 

“Well, it’s all over !” growled Heavy, who 
had been trampled underfoot to shield Hicks, 
still cowering under his bulk. “Suppose you 
untie yourself from me, Hicks, and shake 
hands ! You Freshmen have won, thanks to 
your usual luck — ^you surprised us by coming 
on the scene so dramatically !” 

He gripped Hicks’ hand with true sports- 
manship, and some force; the Freshman, de- 
ciding that, after all, he was really alive, 
began to recover his old debonair self-posses- 
sion. 

“Thanks, Heavy,” he responded modestly. 
“I was almost too late, as the rush started so 
swiftly that I was not aware of it, but I got 
here in time, I am happy to say, and led my 
class to victory !” 


92 


WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID 


Then the exultant Freshmen swept down 
on him, and bore him on their shoulders to 
his room, a shouting, madly, deliriously 
happy mob! In the first official encounter 
for the year’s honors, with the Sophomores, 
they were completely victorious — the football 
game, the track meet, and the baseball game 
at Commencement must be fought out, but 

with Hicks to lead the class of ’19 

It was a foregone conclusion, therefore, 
that the Freshmen would elect, that night in 
the meeting they were allowed to have for the 
choosing of a recognized leader, T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., to guide the destinies of ’19 
through the Freshman year, and lead his 
class against the Sophomores. And when 
the shouting, the cheers, and the graceful, 
witty speech of acceptance from Hicks were 
all ended, that butterfly Freshman was left 
in his room — alone, in all his glory ! 


93 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Without being aware that Butch, in his 
doorway, was eying him ominously through 
the open door of the room, the happy-go- 
lucky Hicks posed dramatically before the 
mirror, and inspected proudly his blackened 
eye, bruised forehead, and badly swollen face, 
for not even Heavy’s bulk had quite protected 
him from the wild rush of his classmates 
over their prostrate forms. 

“I didn’t want to be leader,” he proclaimed. 
“I didn’t seek the office — I let the office seek 
the man ! But, as Bill Shakespeare well said, 
‘Some men are born great, some achieve 
greatness, and others — have it thrust upon 
them’! When William mentioned that last 
class, he had in mind Thomas Haviland 
Hicks, Jr. I” 


VI 

HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 

O N the last day of October, T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., was sauntering past the 
Gymnasium when he heard his name loudly 
called. The care-free Freshman, who had 
been detained in Recitation Hall a few min- 
utes, after the final class, because the English 
instructor’s opinion of his weekly theme did 
not rank it quite as near Shakespeare’s best 
as Hicks generously believed it came, turned 
toward the entrance, and caught sight of a 
notice on the bulletin board. 

“Hicks !” The class leader beheld the two 


95 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


heavy Freshmen, Beef McNaughton and 
Pudge Langdon, plunging toward him from 
the Gymnasium, “The very fellow we are 
looking fori Right this way, old man, and 
we’ll find some togs for you! Didn’t you 
know that because the first team is away, and 
the Sophs have a class meeting, the Fresh- 
men can use the gridiron for practice today ?” 

“Captain Brewster has a notice posted,” 
said Pudge, as they dragged the helpless 
Hicks toward the Gymnasium locker-room, 
“urging every Freshman to report for prac- 
tice, because the Freshman-Sophomore game 
is Thanksgiving Day! Coach Corridan is 
going to help us today, and we will scrim- 
mage against a team of Juniors and Seniors !” 

“And you must play quarterback!” an- 
nounced Beef, as he and Pudge rummaged in 
a pile of old suits, cast-off sweaters, and worn 
jerseys that had been left after the college 
96 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


eleven, substitutes, and the scrubs had taken 
their outfits. “Why, the way you tackled 
Heavy Hughes in the class rush, and downed 
him, convinced me that you are just the one 
to direct our eleven against the Sophs !” 

“The price of glory — reflected the 
shadow-like Hicks, whose vivid imagination 
at once drew pictures of himself stretched, 
pale and still on the football field, with the 
awed collegians standing in hushed, silent 
groups ! 

But he could not refuse to don the nonde- 
script garb the two big Freshmen managed 
to find for him, for a very logical reason; 
the night before he had remarked, in the pres- 
ence of these and others of his class, that it 
required “brains,” more than weight, to play 
the quarterback position! The obvious de- 
duction was that he, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr,, 
could play a sensational game at quarter; 

97 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


at the time, he had been glad his meaning 
seemed clear, but now 

A few minutes later, Captain Butch Brew- 
ster, on Bannister Field, making strenuous 
efforts to convince that skyscraper Fresh- 
man, “Ichabod,” that his desire to catch a 
football in his hands would be gratified at the 
expense of sprained fingers, gave a gasp of 
amazement, leaned against the goal-post for 
support, and pointed toward the field gate. 

“What is it. Coach ?” he asked faintly. “Is 
it really Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr. ? But 
— what a regalia !” 

Owing to a scarcity of material. Beef and 
Pudge had been forced to sacrifice Hicks’ 
personal appearance to some extent ; the 
splinter-Freshman wore a pair of heavily 
padded baseball pants, one red and one blue 
stocking, a green jersey peeped in places 
through a thick red sweater that resembled 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


a sieve, and his shoes were not mates, while 
his pipe-stem legs were protected by a base- 
ball catcher’s shin-guards. 

Believing, as usual, in “safety first,” Hicks 
himself had strapped on the catcher’s breast- 
protector, and would probably have donned 
the mask, had he found it. Pudge, with an 
artistic soul, had capped this human climax 
by putting a skating toque on the Freshman’s 
head, so that the general appearance of the 
football candidate was weird and startling, 
to say the least. As he was padded as heav- 
ily as possible, without regard to graceful 
outlines, he looked decidedly “hummocky” 
in spots. 

“Why the disguise, Hicks ?” queried Coachi 
Corridan, with polite interest, as the trio 
came up to the goal-posts. “Are you going 
to a masquerade tonight, and exercising 
your costume? You look like a deformed 


99 


,T, HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


potato with a couple of toothpicks stuck in 
itr 

“Behold the Freshman quarterback!” an- 
nounced Beef, dramatically — he was in ear- 
nest, for like all of the deluded Freshmen, 
except Butch, he had been thrilled by Hicks’ 
tackle of the mighty Heavy. “You saw him 
lead the class rush, Captain Brewster, and 
make Hughes crash to earth !” 

To do Butch full justice, the big Freshman 
had never breathed the awful truth of the 
blithesome Hicks’ real reason for dashing, at 
the head of his classmates, into the Sopho- 
more horde; while he was forced to sit in 
his friend’s room and watch that hero grace- 
fully accept the laurels heaped on his devoted 
head, Brewster had done nothing more than 
give the undeserving T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., 
a queer look. But the confident Hicks quaked 
inwardly now, as Beef sought to build him a 


lOO 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


football reputation on the frail foundation 
of the class rush episode — suppose Butch 
knocked the props away ! 

“The baseball season starts in March, 
Hicks,” said Butch at last, after gazing 
quizzically at his friend. “You don’t mean 
quarterback. Beef — the only thing that 
shadow of a pencil mark could possibly be 
to a football team is a drawback ! Whatever 
you say about it, Coach, is final !” 

“Join that squad and pass the ball awhile,” 
decided Coach Corridan. “Soon I’ll give you 
a copy of some plays, and you can study the 
signals in the stand — I may try you out at 
quarterback, when we have a scrimmage.” 

“Thanks!” breathed the relieved Hicks. 
“The Freshman team has brawn enough. 
Coach, but it needs brains at quarterback! 
I’ll get the signals well in mind, and drive 
the eleven at top speed — strategy, courage, 

lOI 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


and resourcefulness — that’s my idea of play- 
ing quarter !” 

Neither Captain Brewster nor Coach Cor- 
ridan could pass judgment on the heedless 
Hicks until he had heen tested in a scrim- 
mage; the class team captain’s private opin- 
ion was that the festive Freshman was try- 
ing to keep his laurels as long as possible — ■ 
that he had been forced to appear on the field, 
rather than risk his classmates’ disappoint- 
ment, after his rash talk. On the side-lines, 
all the Freshmen were shouting for Hicks at 
quarter, and in the face of that ovation, Hicks 
could not refuse to report ! 

“Still,” Butch admitted to the Coach, “his 
father, you know, was a phenomenal football 
player, and it’s possible that Hicks inherits 
his instinct ; at times a light fellow is a won- 
der — Maulbetsch, of Michigan, for instance ! 
Personally, I would refuse to play him with- 


102 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


out having his life insured, but — ^he may be a 
fine quarterback!” 

T, Haviland Hicks, Jr,, as he methodically 
passed a football to the Freshman at his 
right, in a circle of candidates, was pathet- 
ically wondering how he could escape the dire 
Fate his supposed heroism in the class rush 
had forced him to meet. To make things 
worse, he had enlarged on the fact that his 
quick-working mind, and the ability to think 
and act at once, qualified him for quarterback 
— now, having set the trap, he was pushed 
into it by Beef 1 

“If I can get through today without them 
suspecting I’m scared half to pieces,” he re- 
flected, “maybe I can sprain an ankle, or 
something, so I won’t have to practice again ! 
Say, I never dreamed they could pick out such 
a big-looking team as that, outside of the 
regular squad !” 


8 


103 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Hicks’ imagination was again at work — 
the make-shift team was composed of some 
Juniors and Seniors who had never gone in 
for athletics strongly, and who were about as 
physically dangerous as a flock of mosquitoes. 
Some of them had never been introduced to a 
football, some got out of breath after two 
rushes, and of the entire aggregation, not 
one bore the slightest resemblance to a grid- 
iron player. Yet to T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., 
they were transformed into Ted Coys, Brick- 
leys, and Poes ! And the other team greatly 
resembled the Yale ’Varsity! 

“Get some of these plays in mind I” Coach 
Corridan thrust a paper into his hands, and 
pushed him toward the side-line. “I’ll start 
Haddon at quarter, and try you when you 
know a few signals, just to see how you 
handle yourself and the ball. This is about 
the only scrimmage you fellows will get, for. 


104 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


the regulars will be on the field after this — 
you’ll just run through the plays.” 

“If I can only get through today,” thought 
Hicks, as he studied the plays, easily getting 
the signals in mind, “I am saved! I can 
drive the team all right, just running off sig- 
nals and plays against the air! But — sup- 
pose they all fall on me today ? If Butch finds 
out I’m scared — I can’t keep on making the 
Freshmen believe I’m a brilliant quarter! 
Oh, I won’t worry, for some kind Fortune 
will aid me!” 

“Hicks!” shouted Captain Brewster at 
last, after Haddon had excitedly fumbled a 
dozen times, hurled the ball to the wrong 
player more often, and gotten entangled with 
his own interference in quarterback runs. 
“Come on here, and call what signals you 
have learned — show us your prowess !” 

With throbbing heart, and a sensation sim- 

105 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


ilar to the one obtained by a swift elevator 
descent, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., trotted forth ; 
his knees were knocking together under the 
abnormal padding, and he felt like turning to 
flee, but escape was impossible, in spite of his 
famous escaping powers, and in a dazed con- 
dition, he took his place behind the Freshman 
scrimmage line — the signals he had known a 
moment before were now a jumbled mass of 
figures in his brain ! 

‘‘Formation A — ” he gasped, at random, 
his throat dry and husky, “i — 17 ” 

^"Signal!” exploded Captain Butch, at full- 
back. “Hicks — your team has the ball on its 
own twenty-yard line — ^first down — and you 
call for me to drop-kick a goal practically the 
entire length of the field, over the other 
eleven’s goal-posts! Signal!” 

“I got mixed,” quavered Hicks, getting 
down behind his center, whose idea of pass- 
106 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


ing the ball was to get rid of it without delay, 
no matter what became of it — an impression 
he must have passed to the toothpick quarter, 
‘‘88— 33— 65— B— right !” 

The signal was for a fake tandem play 
through right tackle, with the last player of 
the tandem taking the ball from the quarter- 
back as he, instead of following through, 
swerved' and dashed behind the quarter, and 
around left end — getting the pigskin on a 
delayed pass. Hicks’ duty was to fake a 
pass on his right hand to the first of the tan- 
dem, then swing to his left and deliver the 
ball to the runner, on his way around left end. 

The play started smoothly enough, for 
Pudge and Beef plowed into the weak line 
of the make-shift eleven, and its backfield 
desperately piled up in front of them to stop 
what they believed was a straight line-buck; 
Butch, the last player of the tandem, shot 


107 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

around back of Hicks at top speed, with a 
fine start, an unguarded end of the line, a 
clear field — ^with everything, in fact, except 
the ball! 

The brilliant quarter, forgetting in his 
alarm to turn toward the left after he had 
faked a pass to the tandem play plowing 
past his right, had kept on turning toward his 
right side, thereby missing Butch completely; 
by the time the bewildered Hicks had 
made the revolution and faced left end, 
Captain Brewster had stopped, and stood, 
his hands on his hips, watching the per- 
plexed quarter, while the recovering back- 
field of the enemy charged down on him ! 

‘T must get it away!” shuddered Hicks. 
“Or they will tackle me, and slam me hard ! 
Oh — there’s a chance ” 

That skyscraper Freshman called “Icha- 
bod” was endeavoring to play right end — on 
io8 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


this play, he had rushed aimlessly ahead, not 
striving to box his opposing end, and as that 
worthy went after Hicks, he stood alone, 
towering over the others by several sections. 
Much as a stranger in a big city gets his 
bearings by a lofty building, when he is lost, 
so the dazed Hicks found in the elongated 
Ichabod a tower of refuge. 

“Forward pass !” he shrieked, and hurled 
the football, with all his might, at an objec- 
tive point about three feet over Ichabod’s 
head, so as to make perfectly sure it would 
get a safe distance from himself. The tall 
Freshman, who had played first base on his 
village nine, immediately forgot instruc- 
tions, reached up as he would have done for 
a wild throw to first, and collected at once the 
football and two sprained fingers; amid the 
cheers of the thrilled spectators. 

As there was no one to deny him, he gal- 
109 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


loped eighty yards down the field, and sat 
down on the pigskin, behind the goal-posts 
of the thrown-together upper-class eleven. 
This constituting the only touchdown both 
teams had been able to compose in an hour’s 
scrimmage, the Freshmen on the side-lines 
were naturally more than ever positive that 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr,, was the right selec- 
tion for quarterback! 

“Pretty quick thinking, Hicks!” nodded 
Coach Corridan approvingly, for he had not 
been watching at the moment, and had turned 
just in time to see the finish of the play, so 
he concluded that the quarter had cleverly 
executed that difficult move — the forward 
pass. “That will be all for today — Brew- 
ster, get this crowd together all you can and 
run through signals — some good material for 
next season here, and you might beat the 
Sophs!” 


no 


HICKS PAYS FOR HIS GLORY 


“Hicks ! Hicks ! Hicks !” thundered the 
elated Freshmen rooters. “Rah for T. 
Haviland Hicks, Jr., our quarterback!” 

“Hicks I” Captain Butch transfixed the 
now confident Freshman with a look that was 
ominous. “What kind of playing was that 

you just did? Why ” 

“I sized up the situation,” explained Hicks, 
serenely, “and as you were so slow in getting 
past me, so I could pass you the ball, I feared 
the other team might see the play and stop 
it, so I decided to use my brain, and take them 
by surprise by working the forward pass, as 

Ichabod was free, and ” 

“Very good, Hicks, very good!” approved 
the Coach, delightedly. “A quarterback 
must have courage, and be ready to take a 
risk, if he believes it will result in a gain. I 
would suggest you for quarter, but Captain 
Brewster will have full authority in selecting 


III 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


the line-up of his eleven for the Freshman- 
Sophomore game.” 

Over on the side-line, the Freshmen, 
thrilled by what, from where they stood, jiad 
seemed a sensational forward pass, called 
for and ably executed by Hicks, and resulting 
in Ichabod’s striding eighty yards to a touch- 
down, were shouting clamorously : 

“Hicks for quarter — Hicks for quarter — 
Hicks! Hicks! Hicks!” 

“You are right. Coach.” Captain Butch 
Brewster spoke grimly, with a sinister mean - 
ing. “/ will pick the Freshman team for that 
contest !” 


VII 

HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 

O N Thanksgiving Day, an hour before 
the great Sophomore-Freshman foot- 
ball game, Captain Butch Brewster, of the 
first-year team, strode across the corridor 
into the room of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. He 
found that ambitious youth standing by the 
bed, gazing in deep melancholy at the insane- 
looking gridiron outfit selected for him by 
Beef McNaughton and Pudge Langdon, who 
had picked out a weird costume, 

“If I’ve got to perish for the honor of ’19, 
Butch!” he wailed, “Why can’t I meet my 

1 13 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


fate in appropriate garb, and not in this 
futuristic toggery?” 

Without a word. Butch strode back to his 
room. In a few seconds he returned with a 
good football suit, which he threw down be- 
fore the eyes of the surprised Hicks. 

“It’s this season’s uniform, Hicks!” he 
announced, “and here are two stockings of 
the same hue; I’ll let you wear my good jer- 
sey, and I’ve found a fine gold and green 
sweater for you. Now, you hustle into these 
togs, and get out on the field, for I am going 
to ” 

“Start me in the first quarter ?” demanded 
the alarmed Hicks, the elevator-descent sen- 
sation attacking him, yet a trifle elated that 
he had deceived even the astute Butch Brew- 
ster as to his real football caliber. 

“Give you a front row seat on the side- 
line I” finished Butch, crushingly. “You will 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


wrap yourself in a blanket, T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., and give a correct imitation of 
Geronimo, the Indian chief! Do you sup- 
pose for one second, you utterly worth- 
less, strengthless string-bean, that you have 
made me believe you wanted to play quar- 
terback, or that, if I played you, that you 
would do anything more than dodge out of 
danger ?” 

“I am astounded. Butch,” began the grin- 
ning Hicks, “and deeply hurt that ” 

“Now listen, Hicks,” said the big Fresh- 
man, tolerantly, “I have never divulged to 
a human being the terrible secret of why you 
appeared on the scene of the class-fight so 
marvelously at the right moment, or how you 
came to tackle Heavy in sheer panic. Neither 
have I exposed your luck in turning what 
should have been an end run from a fake 
tandem play into a forward pass, because you 

115 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


turned wrong, and hurled the ball when you 
got scared! 

“If ‘a friend beareth his friend’s infirmi- 
ties,’ then I have a crushing burden of yours 
to carry, both mental and physical ! I’ve been 
a true friend — I haven’t taken your unde- 
served glory from you, have I ? I’ve let you 
alternate with Billy Harnsworth at quarter- 
back, and the Freshmen still believe you are 
a brilliant quarter. You can deceive them, 
if possible, in your usual style, as to why you 
are on the side-line, but I know you would 
rather be there than in the scrimmage !” 

“Thanks, Butch, awfully!” responded the 
grateful Hicks, shamelessly. “You are a 
true chum, and to you alone I must confess 
that I was shivering at the idea of getting in, 
the game ! As for making the Freshmen be- 
lieve there is some strategic cause for my be- 
ing kept on the side-line, leave that to me; 

ii6 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


when it comes to anything that requires 
brains, I am ready, but Nature has cheated 
me, physically.” 

Half an hour later, after listening to an 
earnest talk by Captain Butch, in which he 
gave instructions that were promptly for- 
gotten by the nervous Freshmen, the first- 
year class team jogged out on Bannister 
Field, amid the riotous cheers of their class- 
mates. The Sophomore eleven was already 
on the gridiron, running off plays with a 
smoothness that struck terror to their rivals. 

“Rah! Rah-Rah! Rah! Rah!” cheered 
- the Freshman cohorts, massed on one side of 
the field, “Freshmen! Freshmen! Fresh- 
men ! Hicks ! Hicks ! Hicks !” 

All of the Bannister collegians, with most 
of the Faculty, and a number of townspeople, 
always turned out to witness this annual 
spectacular gridiron farce, as the regular 
117 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


team’s schedule ended the Saturday before 
Thanksgiving. The Freshmen were usually 
frightened helpless, and the Sophomores fully 
as perturbed, so that the contest became a 
hilarious series of fumbles, mixed signals, 
and wholly unexpected plays. 

To the lower classes, however, it was an 
important event — the official rivalry between 
them was limited to the class rush, the foot- 
ball game, the outdoor track meet, and the 
baseball contest — naturally, both the Sopho- 
mores and the Freshmen were eager to carry 
off honors for the year. As the first-year 
collegians, thanks to Hicks’ dramatic appear- 
ance, had captured the rush, the Sophomores 
were grimly determined to win the gridiron 
battle, and to this end, their classmates nois- 
ily encouraged them. 

Two elongated cheer-leaders urged the 
Freshmen to riotous clamor, which was ably 

ii8 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


aided by the horns, rattlers, and cowbells they 
had brought to Bannister Field; some in- 
spired Sophomores, across the chalk-marked 
gridiron, had dragged out an immense boiler, 
and by beating on it with iron rods, a terrific 
clangor arose, which confused the second- 
year team fully as much as it annoyed the 
enemy ! 

‘They’re off!” shouted Skeet Wiggles- 
worth, as the referee’s whistle sounded. 
Coach Corridan officiating. “But — Billy 
Harnsworth is at quarter ! What’s the idea 
of that, Hicks? We thought you would be 
out there running the team !” 

“Listen — ” the slim Hicks, wrapped in his 
blanket and striving to seem like a Yale foot- 
ball star, was impressive. “You fellows 
remember the class rush — ^how, when I ap- 
peared on the scene, the Sophs were demoral- 
ized ?” 

119 


9 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“Do we!” shouted an excited Freshman, 
while his classmates crowded around the 
heavily armored Hicks. “Didn’t it shock 
them, and strike fear to their hearts? They 
were panic-stricken !” 

“I don’t want to appear chesty,” continued 
the crafty Hicks, who knew that by putting 
Ted Haddon at end, and bringing Billy back 
to quarter, the problem had been solved, “but 
suppose, fellows, just suppose Billy starts at 
quarter; well, the Sophomore team wonders 
why I am not in the line-up — they keep glanc- 
ing nervously at the side-line, where I stand, 
silent and ominous — they know that my team 
can depend on me, and when I toss aside my 
blanket, stride forth ” 

“That’s right 1” exulted the aroused Skeet. 
“Hicks will make them nervous and weak by 
standing on the side-line, and when they are 
thoroughly worried then he will dash into the 


120 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


game, as he did in the class rush, and carry 
off the victory 

Though Sheet had never posed as a 
prophet, for had he done so, he would have 
been without honor at Bannister, his 
prophecy was to be fulfilled, and in a startling 
way that not even the most vivid imagination 
could ever have pictured. 

The Sophomore team seemed the stronger, 
with Jack Merritt at quarter, Babe McCabe 
at fullback, and Heavy Hughes playing right 
tackle — all regular Bannister stars, while the 
line was fairly strong, though inexperienced, 
except for this same contest in their first year. 
In fact, except the few who belonged to the 
football squad, most of the class team players 
got within close range of a football only on 
this important occasion. 

Though it possessed a weak line, the Fresh- 
man backfield, made up of Butch Brewster at 

I2I 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


fullback, Pudge Langdon, right-half. Beef 
t McNaughton, left-half, and Billy Harns- 
worth, quarter, was formidable. The sky- 
scraper Ichabod planted his length at right 
end, with Ted Haddon crouched at left — the 
line, however, between the ends was about as 
staunch and dependable as tissue paper. 

“Come on, Freshmen!” urged Captain 
Butch, as his toe plunked into the yellow oval 
for the kick-off. “Down the field, ends, and 
get the fellow with the ball 1” 

With malice aforethought. Butch strate- 
gically drove the pigskin to the fifteen-yard 
line of the Sophomores, where trembled a fat 
little second-year collegian, “Doc” Bowles, 
who grew more and more alarmed as the 
football loomed nearer and nearer. Like 
most inexperienced players, he essayed to 
catch the ball on his chest, and it bounded 
high in air, to his intense surprise ; Jack Mer- 


122 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


ritt, however, had sprinted over, and grace- 
fully pocketing the pigskin with arms and 
body, as it fell, he dashed down the field. 

The trained football players of each eleven 
did the real work, while the rest ran around 
helplessly and blocked traffic ; Captain Butch, 
after shoving some bewildered Freshmen out 
of the way, tackled Jack on the Sophomores’ 
forty-yard line, and brought him crashing to 
earth. 

The Sophomores lined up with the ball, 
and the great Sophomore-Freshman football 
game was on ! However, as it was the sen- 
sational play of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., that 
made this contest go down in Bannister his- 
tory as one of its most memorable occasions, 
the highly amusing, but utterly football-less 
actions of the teams, until Hicks strode on 
the field, are hardly worthy of being chron- 
icled. 


123 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


The Sophomores would gain several first 
downs, and then there would be a fumble, and 
the lengthy Ichabod usually reached the ball 
first, by a section or two; then the Freshman 
backfield would make long gains, until the 
weak line crumbled, and let Jack Merritt or 
Babe McCabe through in time to down the 
runner before the play started, and the ball 
would go over on dowms. For three periods, 
and most of the fourth, the scoreless game 
see-sawed, full of wonderful, but unexpected 
plays, timid tackles, fumbles, and hilarious 
errors. 

When Billy Hamsworth was hurt and 
carried from the field, Captain Butch had 
managed to carry the ball, on an end run, to 
the Sophomores’ twenty-five-yard line; get- 
ting the time left to play, the Freshman 
leader learned that but two minutes of the 
final quarter remained! Two minutes — 


124 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


twenty-five yards to make, and — a fumble or 
a misplay likely to happen any instant! 
There was but one play to make that was 
fairly safe — a drop-kick for goal 

“Hicks!” he called, for the simple reason 
that, with Billy out, there was no one else to 
summon, and he had to have a quarterback, 
to show the regulation team on the field. 

A thunderous cheer for “Hicks !” went up 
from the Freshmen, the cowbells clamored, 
horns blew a raucous blast, and the joyous 
first-year students were positive that the 
game was won for their team! As Hicks, 
with an intensely dramatic action, flung aside 
his blanket, seized his headgear and nose- 
guard, and wobbled out on the field, the 
Freshmen went wild with joy ! 

“Now listen, Hicks !” panted Butch, as the 
quarterback arrived. “You don’t have to do 
one thing — ^you can dodge out of danger all 


125 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRi^SHMAN 


you please ! Call the signal for a drop-kick 
for goal — formation C — 23 — ^45 — 1 1 — 9 — 
and then, for the sake of ’19, get out of the 
way, so the center can pass directly to me, 
in the kick formation, and I’ll try to kick 
goal ! There’s no chance for you to bungle 
if you ” 

“Right]” exclaimed the immensely relieved 
Hicks. “I’ll get out of the way. Butch ! You 
had better whisper to the center to pass you 
the ball, no matter what play I call, for it 
will bother the Sophomores, if they know our 
signals !” 

In truth, Hicks was so shivery that he 
feared he might get the wrong signal, leaving 
Butch to stand ten yards back, twiddling his 
thumbs impotently, a signal for the center to 
pass directly to the kicker, while the ball was 
on its way elsewhere. After Butch had 
patiently explained the center’s duty to that 
126 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


exhausted Freshman, he dropped back, and 
the heroic Hicks, for a wonder, called the cor- 
rect signals. 

'‘Hold — line !” besought Butch, as he 
stood, waiting for the pass, and determined 
to kick the winning goal, while the spectators 
were hushed, for this was the crisis of the 
game — if the pigskin whirled over the cross- 
bar, the Freshman eleven would have won 
the famous contest! The next few mo- 
ments meant to 1919 victory or — defeat I 

Hicks, acting entirely within his rights, 
obeyed Butch’s command, and as soon as he 
saw the ball whirl past him, he dodged lithely 
to one side, at an extremely safe distance 
from the scrimmage zone, and waited. The 
pass to the Freshman captain was very poor, 
and he was forced to turn the ball — the weak 
line crumpled as Heavy, Babe, and Jack 
bucked it fiercely, and Babe broke through. 


127 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


just as Butch drop-kicked, with all his 
strength ! 

The pigskin left the ground, sailed straight 
into Babe’s wide chest, with a resounding 
thump, bounded high in air, and off to one 
side — ten yards beyond right end; the cry of 
dismay from the Freshmen rooters changed 
to a mad delirium of joy, for T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., having sought safety, stood — 
yards from any Sophomore player, and the 
ball was descending on him ! 

Hicks, as startled as anyone, stared at the 
ball as in a trance, and was so disconcerted 
by its unheralded appearance in his vicinity, 
when he had been watching for it to sail 
over the crossbar, that it fell through his 
nerveless arms and rolled on the turf. Then, 
in a flash, his benumbed brain cleared, and 
the awful lethargy left his body — here was 
his chance to gain the crowning glory of all 
128 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


— to make the touchdown that would win the 
great Thanksgiving Day class game for 
old T9! 

He pursued the erratically bounding oval 
— instead of falling on it, as he had been 
trained to do — ^picked it up, and hearing 
thudding footfalls approaching, he set off at 
a mad sprint. Faster and faster the shadowy 
Freshman fled, in mortal terror of being 
tackled, and the faster he sped, the nearer 
sounded those footfalls, as some heavy player 
— possibly Babe McCabe, strove to get within 
tackling distance. Hicks had a vision of big 
Babe,, diving through the air, clutching his 
knees as he collided with the splinter-Fresh- 
man, and then — that awful crash as his frail 
form struck the ground ! 

The quarterback was no sprinter, but ter- 
ror of being tackled gave him several pairs 
of wings, and on he flew — he had not 


129 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


dreamed the goal-line was so many miles 
away, but after years of running, it appeared ; 
if he could only fall across it, before he was 
tackled, he would be saved! Even in his 
fear, pictures of glory came before him — 
he, the hero of the Freshman-Sophomore 
game, being feted and banqueted by admir- 
ing classmates, down at Jerry’s — the idol of 
his class, the sensation of the Bannister 
campus ! 

What a fitting climax to his career so far ! 
First, the marvelous escape from the hazers, 
then — his dramatic revelation, his timely ap- 
pearance in the class rush, and now — ^his win- 
ning the class football game by a phenomenal 
run for a touchdown, after he had cleverly 
stepped to one side of the scrimmage to guard 
against just what had happened. He must 
not forget that he had divined a blocked kick, 
and that, with wonderful football instinct, he 


130 



Hearing thudding footfalls approaching, he set off at 
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. 4 . 




HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


had leaped to one side — ^just in time to re- 
cover the ball ! 

The thudding feet came nearer — and so 
did the goal-line! In fact, both arrived at 
the same time, but the tackier arrived with 
considerably more force, and Hicks, after all, 
was tackled. The earth arose and smote his 
feeble frame lustily, and several constella- 
tions of stars, adorned with luminous comets, 
swam across his vision, but as he fell, he saw 
the white goal-line under him, and a glorious 
knowledge was his — ^he had scored the win- 
ning touchdown ! 

“Carry me in, fellows!” he murmured, as 
he was surrounded. “I’ve given my best for 
old ’19 — I’ve fought my hardest for my class, 
and ” 

He staggered to his feet dizzily — ^wHy 
were the Sophomores shrieking, doing a 
snake dance about the field, hurling hats over 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


their crossbar ? Why did the Freshmen, de- 
jected, silent, with heads drooping, shuffle in 
deep melancholy from the side-line? Why 
did Captain Butch Brewster, rising from the 
turf, regard the brilliant Freshman quarter- 
back with such utter scorn and speechless 
wrath? 

“Why, what’s wrong. Butch?” he croaked, 
feebly. “Didn’t I — ^make a touchdown, and 
win the game?” 

“You did!” Butch glared at him fiercely. 
“I ran as fast as I could, and I tackled you 
good and hard, Hicks, but it was too late — 
you were across the goal-line !” 

“Fow tackled me?” gasped T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., all his dreams of added glory fad- 
ing swiftly away. “Fow — what for. Butch ?” 

“Because,” exploded the angry Fresh- 
man captain, “you, with that wonderful brain 
of yours, chased the football around for a few 


132 


HICKS SCORES A TOUCHDOWN 


seconds in concentric circles before you 
picked it up, and when you did start, you 
were so scared — understand me — scared that 
you’d be tackled, that you got bewildered and 
ran eighty-five yards for a touchdown — to 
the wrong goal ! 

“You hopeless, scatter-brained, aban- 
doned, useless toothpick — you have scored 
a touchdown for the Sophomore team, and 
won the class game for ’i8 !” 


VIII 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 

T homas haviland hicks, jr., 

ex-quarterback — with emphasis on the 
prefix — of the 1919 football eleven, stood by 
the window of his room, gazing in deep 
melancholy out across the deserted campus. 
The sky was dark and cloudy, a cold wind 
moaned drearily through the leafless trees, 
and Nature seemed in as gloomy a mood as 
that of the despondent Freshman, who was 
in the sub-cellar of despair. 

Across the Quadrangle, a large banner 
hung from Jack Merritt’s windows on the 


134 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


second floor of Smithson, and the red-paint 
words blazed luridly in the glow of the arc 
light: 

THE KING (HICKS) IS DEAD! 

LONG LIVE THE KING (MERRITT)! 

HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN! THE FRESH- 
MAN IDOL HAS DROP-KICKED HIMSELF FROM 
THE PEDESTAL OF FAME! HICKS’. BRIEF REIGN 
IS ENDED! SIC TRANSIT GLORIA H/CK/5— MEAN- 
ING, THUS PASSETH THE GLORY OF HKSKS! 

1918 IS SUPREME! 

The mosquito-like Freshman’s appearance 
in “Delmonico’s Annex,” as the Bannister 
dining-hall had been designated for years, 
had been the signal for pandemonium to 
break loose ! Fate had cruelly delayed Hicks 
in the shower and in his dressing after the 
class game, so that practically all of the col- 
legians were at the tables when he entered — 


10 


135 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


also, the Freshmen were seated at the ex- 
treme end of the long room! 

With his table seeming farther away than 
the Sophomore goal-line had been, and — in 
the awful silence, breathless and ominous, 
that followed the bedlam of jeers, shouts, 
whistles, and laughter — his footsteps on the 
bare floor sounding to him like the noise of 
cavalry crossing a wooden bridge — Hicks 
had courageously marched in to supper. As 
he passed the Sophomore tables. Jack Merritt 
arose and shouted: 

“This way, Mr. Hicks — if you want to 
head for the Sophomore tables — ^you are go- 
ing in the wrong direction again I” 

It was not that T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., was 
in the least measure less popular with the 
upper-classmen, he was liked for his sunny 
nature, and his irresistibly friendly ways ; but 
the blithesome Freshman had been so care- 
136 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


free and confident, full of an easy assurance 
that he would succeed in anything he at- 
tempted, that the Bannister collegians were 
riotous with mirth at his downfall. 

While the Sophomores were hilarious with 
joy, Hicks found a very supernaturally quiet 
number of classmates at his table. Ichabod, 
with sepulchral sadness, insisted on shaking 
his hand, and assuring him that in Hicks' 
dark hour, he was a firm friend! Chub and 
Don Carterson, over whom hung a cloud of 
gloom, somewhat inconsistently told their 
friend to “Cheer up I” while the others were 
profoundly silent and melancholy. The 
downfallen idol, thankful that Butch, Pudge, 
and Beef were at the training tables, left the 
dining-hall as soon as possible. 

As he had crossed the Quadrangle to his 
dormitory, he saw a flamboyant sign on the 
door: 


137 


.T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


THIS IS THE FRESHMAN DORMITORY, HICKS 

DON’T GET BEWILDERED AND RUSH FOR 
SMITHSON— WHERE THE SOPHS ROOMl 

All the way up the two flights of stairs in 
Creighton were elaborate signs, with hands 
pointing the way to the room of T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., and on his portal was a clever 
cartoon of himself, driving a delivery wagon 
holding a football toward the 1918 goal, while 
Butch Brewster futilely pursued him. Un- 
der it he read: 

LEAVE IT TO HICKS— HE WILL DELIVER 
IT TO THE SOPHOMORES! 

At last, he turned from the window, and 
faced the silent Napoleon, who was still in- 
dustriously retreating from Moscow. 

"'Et tu, Napoleon!” he murmured dramat- 
ically. “If misery loves company, shake hands 
I have met my Waterloo, old man — rather, I 
138 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


sprinted and caught up with it ! My brilliant 
career at Bannister is ended, shattered in its 
zenith of glory ! Why was Fate so cruel, to 
guide me to the Sophomore goal, when twen- 
ty-five yards the other way was undying 
Fame for T, Haviland Hicks, Jr.?” 

Evidently, Mr. Napoleon did not know, or 
he was too engrossed with his own desperate 
affairs, so the gloom-enshrouded Freshman 
took his beloved banjo down from its honored 
place on the wall, and entombed it in the 
closet. 

“They won’t loaf in my room now!” he 
mourned. “They will not believe in me after 
— today ! Butch, Beef, and Pudge will never 
be my chums again ! Forgetting all I have 
done for the class, T9 will remember only 
this tragic failure ! If Jack Merritt had out- 
witted me, it would not be so crushing, but to 
think that I dealt myself such a blow ” 


139 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Hearing an apologetic cough, he turned 
and beheld Theophilus Opperdyke; the 
shrinking little Freshman, terribly embar- 
rassed, yet determined, gazed at the dis- 
graced Hicks with such a woebegone expres- 
sion that the dethroned hero was forced to 
smile. 

“I — I just came from supper, sir !” faltered 
Theophilus, nervously, “and I — that is, 
Hicks, sir — I want to tell you that — ^that I’m 
always your friend, no matter what you have 
done ! If there’s anything in the world I can 
do ” 

“Sure, sit down !” responded Hicks, shak- 
ing Theophilus’ hand heartily, and pushing 
him into an easy chair, for there was some- 
thing pathetic in the loyalty of Opperdyke, 
with his fervent gratitude for the shadowy 
youth who had saved him from the hazers. 
“I haven’t committed any crime, old man, and 


140 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


neither have I any horrible weight on my con- 
science ! I do feel worse than if I had taken 
the pennies from a baby’s bank, but ” 

He was interrupted by the entrance of 
that heavy-weight triumvirate — Butch Brew- 
ster, Pudge Langdon, and Beef McNaugh- 
ton; for a second, the alarmed Hicks believed 
they had called to wreak summary vengeance 
on his slender frame, but Captain Brewster 
raised his hand solemnly. 

“Shakespeare,” began Butch eloquently, 
“compares the thing called glory to the circles 
made in the water when a pebble is tossed in 
the pond ; for a time they increase in circum- 
ference, growing, expanding, and then — 
bang! They dissolve, and swiftly fade to 
nothing! Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr., 
tossed a pebble into the Bannister pond by 
escaping from the hazers, and started his 
circle of glory — he tossed in another by his 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


revelation of identity, and a third by his 
lucky class rush stunt, then ” 

“Then I had a chance to hurl a cobblestone 
in,” finished Hicks, “and instead, I tossed it 
in the Sophomore puddle! If my Dad ever 
hears of that touchdown. I’ll never be for- 
given! My circle of glory is fading, all 
right — as Shakespeare wisely stated — ^but, 
I’ll throw a rock as big as Gibraltar in the 
Bannister pond next!” 

The three behemoth Freshmen stood, re- 
garding the erring Hicks with such lugubri- 
ous expressions of tragic grief that he was 
enraged, and he hurled pillows at them with 
deadly aim. 

“See here !” he protested. “This may be 
a funeral, but it is not that of T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr. ! If so, the Sophomores will find 
that I am a very active corpse ! If you think 
that one blow — especially when delivered by 


142 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


myself — is going to knock me out, put an 
error in your box-score !” 

Then the big Freshmen proceeded to in- 
form Hicks what a terrible shame he had 
brought upon his class, how the Sophomores 
were triumphant, and the honor of ’19 was 
being mocked and jeered at Bannister. They 
pointed out that Jack Merritt’s star was in 
the ascendancy, and that unless the disgraced 
first-year leader erased the blot from their 
record by redeeming himself, his classmates 
could never lift up their heads again ! 

“You can never again deceive us as to your 
athletic powers, Hicks !” declared Pudge, at 
last. “We know you now as a genial im- 
postor, and in athletics ’19 has leaned on a 
broken reed! But because of your escape 
from the hazers, and your brilliant inspira- 
tion in that affair, we have decided to offer 
you a chance to atone for this blunder, and 

143 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


reinstate yourself and ’19 in the eyes of old 
Bannister !” 

“Name it, Pudge!” plead the chastened 
Freshman. “How much do you want to sell 
it for? Give me this chance to outwit Jack 
Merritt, and ” 

“Listen.” Pudge was heavily impressive. 
“If you, Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr., desire 
to redeem yourself and climb back on the 
pedestal from which you booted yourself so 
ignominiously today — do something that no 
class since ’04 has done — steal the Sopho- 
more colors, so ’19 can wear them Color 
Day!” 

On the morning before Bannister closed 
for the Christmas holidays, the Sophomores 
always wore for the first time, in chapel, the 
official colors chosen for their college course. 
Tradition demanded that the Freshmen learn, 
if possible, what these colors would be; the 


144 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


second-year class must wear them on Color 
Day, and the under-classmen, if they suc- 
ceeded, concealed the same colors about them 
as they marched into chapel. 

Then — to the dismay of the Sophomores, 
they produced the colors worn by their rivals, 
and flaunted them triumphantly ! However; 
as the older class usually managed to keep 
secret until the proper day what colors were 
chosen, as Pudge said, no Freshman class 
since ’04 had been victorious on Color Day. 

“At T8’s last class-meeting,” explained 
Butch, earnestly, “several combinations of 
colors were suggested, and the class wanted 
time to deliberate ; this splendid plan was ad- 
vanced and adopted — each combination un- 
der consideration was designated by a num- 
ber. Between then and the next meeting, 
the Sophs voted for their class colors right 
before our eyes!” 


145 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

“What !” Hicks was incredulous, but his 
classmate went on ; 

“Heavy Hughes, let us say — ^handed the 
Color Committee his vote, a slip of paper 
with his name and ‘2,’ for instance, on it; 
that meant, a vote for color combination num- 
ber two, which might be anything, we don’t 
know. The Committee sets down a mark 
for ‘2,’ and tears up Heavy’s vote, then 
crosses out his name from the list. At the 
next class-meeting, the number having the 
most marks opposite it — that will be an- 
nounced, and the class colors read out!” 

Butch closed the door, locked it, and low- 
ered his voice mysteriously. 

“Hicks,” he said dramatically, “next 
Wednesday night, at eight o’clock, the Sopho- 
mores hold their class-meeting in the History 
classroom in Recitation Hall — then, they will 
decide on their colors I Of course, a lot of 
146 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


other business will be transacted, and the 
room will be guarded against listening 
Freshmen. 

“That is your chance, Hicks ! If you, with 
seemingly insuperable odds against you, can 
succeed in hearing what colors are an- 
nounced Wednesday as the official ones of 
’i8, so we Freshmen can wear them on Color 
Day — ^and the Sophomores must not know 
you get them — for they would change them, 
then — you will erase from the slate forever 
all memory of your ridiculous fiasco on Ban- 
nister Field today !” 

The slender Freshman was silent, appar- 
ently plunged in profound meditation, and his 
classmates waited breathlessly, believing that 
he was striving to have an “inspiration.” At 
last, just as Beef was about to break the 
silence with a suggestion, T. Haviland Hicks, 
Jr., showed how intent he was in the stealing 


147 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

of the 1918 colors by bursting into uncon- 
trollable laughter ! 

"I just c-can’t help it, Butch!” he shrieked,, 
throwing himself on the bed in a paroxysm 
of mirth. “It’s so funny! I wish I could 
see a motion picture of myself, with you in 
full cry, flying down the field! Oh! Oh! I 
shall die of laughing, I know I shall !” 

“Not of laughter !” growled Beef. “Of— 
us! But — ^ha ! ha ! It is ridiculous, Hicks — 
ho! ho! To see you, looking like a stuffed 
dromedary, loping over the chalk-marks, 
and Butch pounding madly after you ! Oh, 
I ought to crush you, but I have just got to 
laugh !” 

“Haw! Haw!” roared Pudge suddenly, 
collapsing on the davenport, and a second 
later the wrathful Butch surrendered, shak- 
ing with glee, and dived head first into a pile 
of cushions, belaboring them wildly with 
148 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


both hands, while Theophilus Opperdyke, 
with serious countenance and big, solemn 
eyes, sat on the extreme edge of his chair 
and gazed at them. 

‘‘We forgive you, Hicks !” gasped Beef, as 
he staggered for the door. “You irrepres- 
sible, incorrigible, sunny-tempered wretch! 
You are as cheerful in defeat as in victory! 
Come on. Pudge — ^we can’t punish him, but 
the upper-classmen will make life miserable 
for him unless he steals ’i8’s colors !” 

When little Theophilus had followed Beef 
and Pudge from the room, big Butch Brew- 
ster stopped his smiling, and placed both 
hands on Hicks’ shoulders, gazing into that 
youth’s twinkling eyes. 

‘T have got faith in you, old man !” he de- 
clared earnestly. “And while you are not 
an athlete, you have got a quick mind. 
Hicks, the Sophomores have been hazing of 


149 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


late, and they are a trifle too severe, for some 
of the more delicate fellows in our class. 
And now that they have won the class foot- 
ball game, they will haze all the harder ! 

“It isn’t for myself I want it stopped — it’s 
for chaps who aren’t physically strong that 
I ask protection ! I guess it’s impossible to 
do it, but if we could only, in some way, force 
them to go easier ! You cleverly managed to 
keep them from hazing you and Opperdyke, 
and I hoped ” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., gave a good imita- 
tion of his natural self as he gazed at the 
behemoth, serious Butch, and all his debo- 
nair, blithesome self-confidence beamed on his 
cherubic countenance as he spoke: 

“Butch, old mail — just leave it to me! 
Just to show my class spirit, I will, at one 
fell blow, steal the Sophomore class colors, 
acquire a power that will force them to stop 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


all hazing, and again adorn my classic brow 
with the laurel wreath of Fame !” 

“Listen, Hicks.” Butch was ominously 
calm. “If I want to hear fairy tales. I’ll get 
Beef to read Hans Christian Andersen, or 
Mr. Grimm, to me! Here we have offered 
you a chance to redeem your disgraced self 
for that terrible fizzle of today, and you are 
as boastful as ever I Bah — ^you are hopeless, 
and if the upper-classmen ridicule for a year, 
I’ll rejoice, you human misprint!” 

But when the irate Butch Brewster, rag- 
ing like a volcano at the care-free Hicks, had 
lumbered across the corridor and slammed 
his door with expressive force, the erstwhile 
Freshman idol stared meditatively at Mr. 
Napoleon, and his scholarly brow was cor- 
rugated with thought. 

“Why not?” he asked of that melancholy 
general. “Why can’t I accomplish all three 

151 


11 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


things at once? All I need is an inspiration 
big enough to achieve the two feats — get the 
’i8 colors without them knowing it, and find 
a weapon to awe them into giving up hazing ! 
The fear of ridicule is the most potent force 
for humbling the proud, as I learned today ! 
But the inspiration — I must have one, for this 
is my chance !” 

A few minutes later the startled Ban- 
nister collegians heard a most familiar noise, 
and Jack Merritt, scarcely believing his ears, 
looked across the Quadrangle incredulously. 
He saw, at a window on the third floor of 
Creighton Hall, a slender figure, posing like 
a troubadour, and a raucous voice proclaimed 
a song, half original, to the campus and 
dormitories : 

“It’s easy enough to be cheerful, 

When Life flows along like a song — 

But the fellow worth while, is he who can smile. 


152 


THE CIRCLE OF GLORY 


When everything goes dead wrong! 

So mark this down in your memory, 

That while Misfortune may frown ; 

T. Haviland Hicks is the fellow who sticks — 

Oh, you Sophomores can’t keep him down!” 

Butch Brewster, hearing the discordant 
chaos from Hicks’ room, and smiling at the 
chorus, murmured: 

“Our Hicks is himself again — ^now watch 
out, ’i8, for he is surely going to hurl his 
cobblestone into the water, and start a 
mighty circle of glory!” 


IX 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 

B utch BREWSTER, that usually 
good-natured behemoth Freshman, 
hurled his bulk excitedly up and down the 
length of Hicks’ tiger-skin rug; his volcanic 
wrath made the most vivid pyrotechnic erup- 
tions of Mt. Vesuvius pale into insignificance. 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., who was concen- 
trating his colossal intellect on the ex- 
tremely difficult mental effort required to ad- 
just properly a scarf of most futuristic de- 
sign, paused to regard his classmate with 
mild interest. 


154 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


“Bah Jove, Butch, old top !” he commented, 
imitating a London fop for the benefit of his 
friend, who, it seemed, was not much bene- 
fited by Hicks’ dramatic effort. “How per- 
turbed you must be ! Aw, say — if you had 
to bothaw with getting this blawsted scawf 
knotted correctly, old chap, you’d have cause 
to rage, don’t y’ know !” 

“Cause!” exploded Butch, for the blithe- 
some Freshman’s jocund serenity never 
failed to arouse his ire. "'Cause f You ” 

“Don’t say ‘cause’ so often, Butch!” re- 
quested the debonair Hicks, who was ar- 
rayed like a lily of the field. “You remind 
me of the blooming suffragettes ovah in my 
deah England, y’ know! The very word 
makes me shuddah, old top ! My word ! I 
really believe this scawf is horribly out of 
fawshion !” 

“So will you be in a second !” growled the 


155 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


big football star, seizing the grinning Hicks 
in a firm grip, and towing him across the 
room to a calendar on the wall, drawing out 
his watch on the way. “You’ll be out of the 
window, you pestersome, conscienceless 
wretch ! Look — it is half-past seven on Tues- 
day night! Your chance of getting the ’i8 
colors is as thin as our beloved Ichabod, and 
there you posed before the mirror, wasting 
precious time on that lurid tie, and torturing 
me with your idiotic humor !” 

Butch was justified in his wrath, for after 
Thanksgiving night, when T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., had become his old, confident self 
again, blithely assuring his erstwhile team- 
mate that he would have an inspiration, the 
bulky Freshman had believed that his happy- 
go-lucky friend would plot to steal the Sopho- 
more colors. 

But the night before the second-year col- 
156 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


legians’ class-meeting had come, and Hicks’ 
mighty mind seem burdened by no more im- 
portant a thought than that of getting his 
scarfpin at the proper angle. Indeed, after 
his melodious song — which seemed to an- 
nounce to the campus his recovery from the 
shock of his reverse touchdown, the festive 
Hicks had taken up again his care-free, but- 
terfly existence, to the intense indignation of 
his friend. Butch Brewster. 

The ridicule and laughter of the srudents 
he took with a cheery smile, and though the 
Sophomores exulted loudly, the upper-class- 
men soon forgot the tragic football episode, 
and T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., was the same 
sunny-tempered, irrepressible, generous 
Freshman as ever. He devoted his time to 
the laborious tasks of twanging the banjo, 
singing, taking his friends downtown for a 
juicy steak at “Jerry’s,” entertaining his 


157 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

classmates, and — listening joyously to the 
lectures of the earnest Butch. 

“Ouch, Butch!” protested the helpless 
Hicks. “You aren’t bucking a scrimmage 
line now ” 

“No!” agreed Butch, with grim humor. 
“I am tackling a dummy! You graceless, 
abandoned, animated butterfly! You fash- 
ion-plate — ^you tailor’s model — walking 
haberdashery shop ! T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. 
— the ‘glass of fashion, and the mold of 
form !’ Some form you have, you string of 
macaroni ! I believe I will wreak vengeance 
on you now — for the sake of 1919!” 

But Hicks was not destined to suffer for 
his offenses against the dignity of his class 
at that moment, for he was saved from Butch 
by the startling and unexpected entrance of 
that skyscraper Freshman, Ichabod, the 
elongated right end. As this spectral splin- 
158 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


ter was in that high-collared, uncomfortable 
state of being known as “dressed-up,” his 
classmates forgot their feud to stare at him. 

Ichabod, who seemed taller than the Wool- 
worth Building, and as thin as one of Abra- 
ham Lincoln’s rails, was most appropriately 
named by the collegians after the hero of 
Sleepy Hollow. He hailed from some rural 
region to which he proudly referred as “back 
at Bedwell Center, where I come from,” and 
he believed everything the students told him, 
which belief gave him a most weird and won- 
drous knowledge. 

His hands and feet appeared on the scene 
several inches too soon, and were wildly out 
of proportion to his bean-pole figure ; he was 
so tall that he seemed to bend over at the top, 
and his protuberant Adam’s apple bobbed 
up and down vigorously as he talked, which 
he always did as though delivering his con- 


159 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


yersation by contract. Atop of his long, 
crane-like neck was perched a hammer-head, 
adorned with fiery red hair, and his blue eyes 
beamed frankly from an honest, freckled 
countenance. 

“I say, Hicks — ” he began, in a thin, shrill 
yoice that convulsed even the wrathful 
Butch, “I say — you know the Sophomores 
choose their class colors tomorrow night? 
Well, I got an inspiration as to how we fellers 
can steal them! You know — ^you know I 
took shorthand an’ typewritin’ back at Bed- 
well Center High School, where I come from, 
an’ I’m helpin’ to pay my way at college by 
doin’ office-work for ” 

“Pause, you human string-bean!” begged 
Hicks, gasping for breath. “Don’t talk on a 
limited express schedule — put on a local train 
of thought, and stop at a few stations, so 
Butch and I can climb aboard !” 


i6o 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 

“An’ there’s a dictatin’ machine in the Gym 
office.” Ichabod never hesitated. “You’ve 
seen it, fellers — it’s like a phonnygraph, only 
it’s got electric batteries ; there’s a place you 
put a blank record on, an’ then you start the 
thing an’ talk — Mr. Holden, the gym in- 
structor, does — the letters into a funnel ! An’ 
I come along later, with a basketful of them 
records he talked in the daytime, an’ stick on 
one, an’ listen to what he talked — an’ then I 
typewrite from ” 

“Time out!” shouted Hicks, as Butch col- 
lapsed on the bed. “Listen, Ichabod — my 
education has been sadly neglected, but I 
have used a dictaphone, and I know all about 
it! I suppose your brilliant idea is to hide 
the Gym office one in the History classroom, 
and get a record of what the Sophs say about 
the colors ! 

“First, you mental wonder, who of the 

i6i 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, rilESHMA*N^ 

Freshmen could be in the room to start the 
machine at the right instant, and to stop it 
when we wanted the record? Last — a dic- 
taphone is made for a noisy office, and the 
man dictating into one puts his face close to 
the funnel, and talks in a low, clear tone — the 
blank record won’t catch sounds even a few 
feet away, so — draw the curtain on your 
hopes !” 

The awkward Ichabod, tragic sorrow on 
his honest face, sat down on the davenport, 
with a series of double- jointed movements re- 
sembling the coupling-up of a freight train, 
and mourned : 

“That’s so, Hicks ! But I was hopin’ you 
might catch them colors with a dictyphone! 
Back at Bedwell Center — where I come from 
— folks look on me as a detacative ! I’ve read 
all kinds of books an’ stories about them, an’ 
I sent off an’ got a book called ‘How to Be- 
162 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


come A Detacative In Six Weeks !” Full in- 
structions ! I Ve read about these dicty- 
graphs what Detacative Burns uses to get 
evidence, an’ I hoped this plan would work !” 

The skyscraper Freshman’s intensely ear- 
nest ambition to become a “detacative” was 
enough to provoke hilarity, and T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., foresaw in the loose- jointed, cred- 
ulous youth a veritable goldmine of future 
entertainment for himself. 

“Why the gay scenery, Sherlock Holmes ?” 
he inquired, when he could control an insane 
desire to laugh. “Where is the party, old 
man? Or are you working on a case for 

Scotland Yard tonight, and ” 

“You’re pokin’ fun at me, Hicks !” vowed 
Ichabod, with a remarkable demonstration of 
his powers as a sleuth. “But say, fellers — 
there’s a real detacative downtown at the 
Grand Opery House tonight, givin’ a lecture, 
163 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


for fifty cents! I’m goin’ down, to see if I 
can pick up anything from this detacative — 

here’s the dodger ” 

Ichabod produced a carefully folded hand- 
bill and held it out to the solemn Hicks, who 
was nearly stifled with suppressed laughter ; 
the blithesome Freshman unfolded the poster 
slowly, and read : 

LECTURE ! In the Grand Opera House 
— Tuesday night, December first — Benefit 
the new Y. M. C. A. “Modern Means and 
Methods in Detective Work” — ^by Detective 
William P. Malden, of the William J. Burns 
Detective Bureau . Mr. Malden will exhibit 
and demonstrate many modern and scientific 
devices for trapping criminals and gathering 
evidence. Admission — fifty cents. 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., stared at the 
printed bill as if he fully expected to behold 
it turn to a bright butterfly and flutter away I 
Then, to the surprise of the bewildered Butch, 
164 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


and the consternation of the dressed-up Icha- 
bod, the Freshman leader executed a high 
dive to the bed, where he stood on his head, 
rolled over and over, and indicated an excess 
of joy! 

“You act just like a decapitated rooster, 
Hicks,” commented the indignant Butch 
Brewster, “flopping around like that — what’s 
wrong? Oh, Ichabod, I verily believe that 
long-delayed shipment of inspiration has at 
last reached our graceless classmate !” 

“Ichabod!” Hicks arose and sternly 
faced the bewildered Freshman from Bed- 
well Center, Pennsylvania. “An hour more, 
and it would have been too late! A most 
glorious chance to humble ’i8 would have 
been forever lost, had you not shown me this 
poster! On what a slender thread hangs 
the destinies of kings — and other things ! I 
shudder. Butch, to think how near ’19 was to 
165 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


tragedy, had this human lathe not let a great 
light into my mighty brain ” 

“It couldn’t be done with a searchlight!” 
responded Butch, pleasantly. “If you will 
cease that dramatic rigmarole, Hicks, and 
kindly explain what colossal idea has now 
possessed that infinitesimal atom known as 
your mind ” 

From an idling, care-free youth who had 
been extremely perturbed over the correct 
knotting of his lurid scarf, T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., was suddenly transformed into the 
spirit of quick action. All his nonchalance 
dropped from him as a garment discarded, 
and he lost no time in starting a whirlwind 
campaign with a decisiveness that cleared 
him from Butch’s charge of being uncon- 
cerned about the Sophomore colors. 

“Quick, Butch!” he ordered. “Don the 
glad scenery — it’s nearly time for the lecture 

i66 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


now ! Ichabod, hustle down to the driveway 
and hail old Dan Flannagan’s royal equipage 
— he brought some prof from the station a 
few minutes ago ! I’ll shake Beef and Pudge 
into their best clothes — ^you fellows are going 
on a Hicks’ Personally Conducted Tour !” 

Butch, resigned to the inevitable, hurtled 
to his room and broke every known Bannis- 
ter record for quick dressing-up, while the 
lengthy Ichabod went down the stairs seven 
at a time, to the campus; Hicks, thanks to 
his Brewster-condemned habit of imitating a 
butterfly on all occasions, was able to spend 
his moments in urging Pudge and Beef from 
dormitory garb to something a trifle more 
suitable for lecture attendance. 

Ten minutes later, the four Freshmen 
joined the waiting Ichabod on the campus, by 
the driveway. Here stood a rickety, dilapi- 
dated old hack, in the shafts of which was 
13 167 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


propped an antiquated, indifferent-looking 
old horse that seemed to have gone into a 
profound slumber. On the box sat a with- 
ered, weazened little old man, arrayed in a 
time-worn, yet still gaudy red coat, and a 
battered, imposing coachman’s hat tilted at a 
cheerful angle on his head — he grinned at the 
collegians, flicked his long whip, and ex- 
claimed : 

“Lord Nelson — wake up there! Here’s 
some av thim Bannister lads, an’ ye can’t 
slape wid them aroun’l Some wild prank 
afoot Oi’ll vow 1 Ye must promise owld Dan 
ye’ll not kick the bottom out av his hack, 
afore Lord Nelson will consint to pull ye 
downtown I” 

Old Dan Flannagan and his somnolent 
horse, “Lord Nelson,” formed a famous 
Bannister tradition — for countless years, he 
had plied between the station and the campus, 

i68 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


ten cents one way! Joyous collegians, re- 
turning in the fall, piled into the ramshackle 
old hack, and singing or shouting, were 
transported to College Hill; at Commence- 
ment returning alumni — staid business men 
or graduates celebrated in professional pur- 
suits, renewed their youthful memories by 
riding up, as of yore, with good old Dan ! 

“Freshmen may come, and Seniors may 
go,” one alumnus said of him, “but Old Dan 
will drive on forever 1” 

“We won’t smash your caboose, Dan,” 
Hicks assured him, “but those three heavy- 
weights and that serial-story fellow may sink 
the old ship! We want to get to the Grand 
Opera House quickly, and if Lord Nelson 
doesn’t awaken to a sense of his responsi- 
bility, we’ll discharge him and put Ichabod in 
the shafts. Understand?” 

The commanding Hicks climbed to the box 
169 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


on Dan’s right, while Butch heaved his bulk 
up beside the genial Irishman on the left; 
Pudge and Beef complainingly pushed into 
the hack, and only the problem of what to do 
with Ichabod’s six feet and more of anatomy 
puzzled the inspired Freshman. As the 
country lad’s cranium bumped against the 
cab roof, when he sat erect, and his sharp 
knees tortured Beef and Pudge, who blocked 
out most of the space, all three protested most 
vociferously. 

The baffling question was finally solved by 
allowing several sections of Ichabod’s legs to 
protrude from the hack window, thus giving 
more room to the interior, and a most weird 
appearance to the decrepit equipage, as the 
tall Freshman insisted on waving his feet 
gracefully in air. This obstacle removed 
from his path, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., was 
able to assist Butch and the reproachful Dan 
170 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


in getting Lord Nelson to understand that 
something — at least a reasonable interest in 
the proceedings, was expected of him, 

“He didn’t get his nap out this afternoon,” 
spoke Dan, reflectively. “The poor baste 
hates to be disturbed whin onc’t he gets to 
slape, lads! Lord Nelson, wake up — we 
want to get downtown before mornin’ I” 
“Lift him up on the box,” advised Butch, 
while he and Hicks belabored the listless ani- 
mal with their feet. “Maybe we can coast 
down College Hill, and not bother Lord Nel- 
son’s pleasant dreams 1 But start him, Dan, 
or we’ll have to get out and run — it’s eight 
o’clock now 1” 

There sounded volcanic rumblings from 
the inside of the hack, and Ichabod’s high- 
pitched voice wailed that he would never get 
to hear that real “detacative,” unless they 
got off before long. Pudge, who had been 
171 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

asleep when Hicks urged him to dress up, 
was peacefully imitating Lord Nelson, while 
the wrathy Beef growled : 

“I’ve got an exam tomorrow, so hurry up ! 
If Lord Nelson wants to slumber, send in 
and get him some pillows ! Make Hicks pull 
the old barouche !” 

“Lord Nelson ain’t balkin’, lads !” defended 
Dan, as he plied whip, feet, hands, and sting- 
ing words, with equally futile effect. “He’s 
just sound asleep, an’ — ah, now he’s off 1 He 
ain’t exactly a self-starter !” 

With a shuffling gait, seemingly just suf- 
ficient to keep from falling down, the ancient 
horse moved slowly down the driveway, and 
the rickety hack, swaying and creaking, 
rolled along at an almost imperceptible pace. 
With Hicks and Butch shouting loudly for 
more speed. Beef roaring “The Dear Old 
Gold and Green!” in a thunderous voice. 


172 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


Pudge as noisily protesting against the chaos, 
and Ichabod shrieking shrill requests for 
haste, Old Dan Flannagan chuckled in glee, 
as he cracked his whip. 

“Just loike owld times, lads!” he piped. 
“Many’s the Bannister boys Oi’ve trans- 
ported in this owld cab, an’ many’s the wild 
escapades Oi’ve seen, tool Twinty-foive 
years ago Lord Nelson and Oi started travel- 
in’ to College Hill 1 Onc’t Oi had a crowd o’ 
riotous youngsters — Oi mind back in ’90, a 
feller name o’ Hicks — he’s a rich aluminum 
now — ^kicked the bottom out of me hack, an’ 
got away from foive Soppymores what was 
goin’ to haze him ! 

“Why didn’t they set inside wid him? 
Sure, an’ would ye set in a cage wid a ragin’ 
lion, in the dark, Mister Brewster? He was 
a big chap, Hicks, an’ ye should have seen 
him play football! Always in some wild 


173 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


prank, too — they don’t have no students at 
Bannister no more, wid any spirit!” 

“Oh, don’t they ?” demanded Butch softly, 
while Hicks grinned to himself at the way he 
would narrate his father’s college escapades 
to Thomas Haviland Hicks, Sr. “I think 
that defect will be remedied, Dan, for the 
fellow on your right is a son of that famous 
Hicks, and I know he is a chip of the old 
block!” 

“Him a son of Hicks, ’93 ?” Dan surveyed 
the toothpick Freshman dubiously. “Maybe 
he is, sor, maybe he is! An’ as ye say, he 
may be a chip of the owld block, but to owld 
Dan he looks more like just a splinter av it !” 

Thanks to Lord Nelson’s sudden memory 
of oats ahead, the trip down Main Street was 
achieved in comparatively good time, and 
without serious mishap, although several 
small boys betrayed a reprehensible desire to 


174 


ICHABOD SCORES AN ASSIST 


obtain free transportation by clinging to 
Ichabod’s legs, which protruded some dis- 
tance. With a final flourish the expedition 
drew up before the Grand Opera House, bet- 
ter known as the Town Hall, and much to 
Dan’s indignation. Lord Nelson promptly 
went off into slumber again. 

“What’s it all about. Butch?” demanded 
Pudge, drowsily, as he emerged, cramped and 
stiff, from the cab, while Hicks paid the fares 
and Beef pulled Ichabod out after his feet. 
“Why do we want to hear the old lecture — 
I want to sleep more than I do anything 
else!” 

Butch Brewster gazed at the animated 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., who, in his generous 
fashion, was insisting on purchasing tickets 
for the entire expedition, and as usual, was 
having his own way. 

“Don’t ask me. Pudge!” he responded 


175 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


helplessly. “If anyone knows what that 
heedless youth is doing, it isn’t I! We can 
only follow in silence, for this is a Hicks’ 
Personally Conducted Tour!” 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


T^ESPITE the reluctant pace of the pre- 
' historic Lord Nelson, the five Ban- 
nister Freshmen were on time, thanks to an 
apparently fixed determination of the Grand 
Opera House officials not to start at the hour 
announced. Detective Malden had just 
stepped forward on the stage as the collegians 
were ushered to their seats. 

Butch Brewster, following Hicks down the 
aisle, grunted angrily as that lathe- like 
Freshman stopped suddenly, turned, and 
after introducing his elbow to his behemoth 
177 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


classmate’s lumbar region with considerable 
force, sibilated dramatically : 

“That’s him, all right, Butch — it’s him!” 

“Whoever he is — that’s who he must be !” 
responded Butch, somewhat puzzled by 
Hicks’ ungrammatical announcement, but 
somewhat more perturbed by the unexpected 
collision with an angle of the festive Fresh- 
man’s structure. “Stop using my feet for 
a promenade, you graceless lunatic, and sit 
down !” 

The Town Hall, as Pudge insisted on call- 
ing the auditorium, was well filled, so that 
the Freshman quintette graced the greater 
part of a row in the rear, though the sectional 
Ichabod experienced some difficulty in confin- 
ing himself to the space allowed him by his 
ticket. To the joy of the excited T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., there were only a few collegians 
present, and no Sophomores — due to the fact 
178 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


that the first-term examinations were omi- 
nously near, something that weighed lightly 
on that care-free collegian. 

The lecture by the Burns Agency detective 
was intensely interesting, and the Hicks’ Per- 
sonally Conducted Tour expedition were soon 
absorbed in the descriptions of the work, and 
in the narratives of big cases the sleuth 
had handled. Detective Malden carefully 
avoided the sensational as he described 
clearly the Bertillon system, the method of 
finger-print identification, the process of 
“shadowing,” and other phases of his profes- 
sional life. 

“Look at Ichabod !” whispered Pudge, next 
to the Bedwell Center prodigy, who adorned 
one end of the row. “What in the world is 
he doing — reporting this lecture for The 
Bedwell Center News?” 

The skyscraper Freshman overflowed his 


179 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


seat, so that he sat like a senile turkey 
humped on its roost — his knees, propped 
against the back of the seat ahead, were on 
a level with his chin, and served admirably 
as a writing-desk. The elongated Ichabod, 
with a stenographic pad and pencil, was 
actually taking down shorthand notes of De- 
tective Malden’s lecture; oblivious to every- 
thing else in the world, he was gathering 
hints from a “real detacative” ! 

The expression on his homely, honest coun- 
tenance was one of deepest reverence and 
hero-worship ; he seemed to look on the detec- 
tive, who was more like a practical business 
man than the popular conception of a sleuth, 
as nothing less than a demi-god, and he re- 
garded the lecturer with such an awed, wor- 
shipful air that Hicks and Butch, aware of 
the cause, were hugely amused. 

“Watch him, Butch,” grinned Hicks, as 
i8o 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


Ichabod jotted down a few weird characters, 
which were instructions in the art of shadow- 
ing. “Our would-be Sherlock Holmes is pre- 
paring for his ‘detacative’ career!” 

Soon, however, the frivolous T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., was as fully engrossed in the lec- 
ture, for Detective Malden began to exhibit 
and illustrate the use of modern devices for 
trapping criminals, or gathering evidence. 
He showed a few mechanical and scientific 
arrangements that the Freshmen had never 
dreamed of, and some, they believed, existed 
only in fiction. 

“Here,” he held up what seemed to be 
a coil of insulated wire, with a round, black 
disc, two inches thick, at each end, and the 
batteries in a small leather case, “I have a 
form of the detectaphone, known as the 
‘magniphone,’ for it not only catches conver- 
sation in one room and transfers it to another, 

i8i 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

but it also intensifies the voices to almost the 
natural volume. 

“There is nothing mysterious about this 
method of evidence gathering. The magni- 
phone is similar to a telephone, only the 
mouthpiece, or the disc into which sounds 
enter, is at one end of the wires, and it con- 
tains the mechanism for magnifying sound; 
from the disc at the other end the conversa- 
tion is heard. Sound is transmitted in one 
direction only and even a whisper is trans- 
mitted with wonderful distinctness — as the 
apparatus is easily concealed, it is an excel- 
lent means of overhearing conversation at a 
safe distance.” 

Hicks drew a long breath, and Detective 
Malden went on : 

“The trap, of coui>se, is always laid before- 
hand. The end holding the mouthpiece 
disc, as we shall call it, though the speaker 
182 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


does not come near it, is concealed behind a 
picture, let us say, in the criminal’s room. 
Carefully concealed wires run to the detec- 
tive’s place, where is located the disc from 
which the sound comes, and also, the electric 
batteries. 

“The detective may be a square away from 
the offender’s room, but the magniphone will 
catch what is said, and transfer it, almost in 
the same volume, to him — an advantage 
over the dictagraph. He may have witnesses 
to listen with him, or what is more sure evi- 
dence, he may use the recordagraph, a ma- 
chine that registers the talk on a blank record, 
for future reference ! I regret that I do not 
have a recordagraph with me, but ” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., suddenly lost inter- 
est, and when, a few moments later, the lec- 
turer had thrown on the screen back of him 
some motion pictures of the New York Police 
13 183 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


dogs in action, the animated Freshman 
brought down on his devoted head the wrath 
of Butch Brewster, by again referring his 
angular elbow to that worthy’s side. 

“Listen, Butch,” he whispered. “When 
this lecture ends, you fellows go up to Icha- 
bod’s room, understand? Wait for me — I’ll 
be back sometime before midnight, but stay 
up! Don’t tell anyone else — there’s work 
ahead of us tonight, and if you want to get 
the ’i8 colors — leave it to me!” 

As Butch could not think of anything less 
perilous to do than to agree that Hicks should 
plan the campaign, he growled an assent, and 
the slender Freshman climbed over Pudge 
and the hypnotized Ichabod, making his way 
from the Grand Opera House. His class- 
mates were naturally much mystified at his 
defection, but Brewster reminded them 
that it was a Hicks’ Tour, and they must 
184 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


not wonder at anything their leader did. 

A few moments later, after the crowd had 
left the hall, and Butch and his comrades 
were standing in the foyer, they were petri- 
fied at beholding the debonair T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., walking out beside the lecturer, in 
fact, carrying one of Detective William P. 
Malden’s suitcases. The envious Ichabod 
stared in wonder at Hicks, who had gone 
around to the stage door to enter the audi- 
torium, but a great flood of understanding 
inundated Butch’s brain as he heard the de- 
tective remark, with a friendly smile : 

“And I had quite forgotten, Thomas, that 
your father had mentioned you were a Fresh- 
man at his alma mater! Come over to my 
room at the hotel for a while, and tell me of 

your college experiences and ” 

“Gome, fellows 1” said Butch, as the blithe- 
some Hicks winked in a friendly fashion, 
185 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


over his shoulder. “I understand — now ! I 
really begin to feel that, after all, Hicks in- 
tends to steal ’i8’s colors !” 

It was midnight when the Freshman quar- 
tette, waiting in Ichabod’s room at the end 
of Creighton’s second-floor corridor, tired 
and sleepy, and saying all manner of pleas- 
ant things about the absent one, heard a soft 
knock on the door. Beef opened it, and ad- 
mitted the tardy Hicks, who bore a large, 
mysterious bundle — this, after the portal was 
locked, he opened dramatically on the study- 
table, revealing a coil of wire, with black 
discs at each end, and some batteries in a 
leather case. 

“Are you studying to be an electrician?” 
queried Pudge. “Why, that’s the magni- 
phone the detective showed! How did you 
land it, Hicks, and what are you going to do 
with that outfit — imitate a real sleuth?” 


i86 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


“Oh, he is going to hang it on the wall !” 
retorted Butch, forgetting that Pudge and 
Beef had not been present when Ichabod out- 
lined his futile idea of the dictaphone. 
“Don’t ask foolish questions. Pudge!” 

As Hicks was showing unmistakable indi- 
cations of a desire to talk, not an unnatural 
feeling with him, and the mystified Fresh- 
men were perfectly willing for him to clear up 
the fog that enshrouded his actions, he was 
cheerfully given the floor. 

“Fellows,” he began impressively, “I shall 
not gather to myself any glory, if we annex 
the ’i8 colors, for Fortune has favored me! 
First of all, let me say that Detective William 
P. Malden was formerly of Pittsburgh, and 
that he has handled many cases for my Dad, 
so we are well acquainted. It was a lucky 
coincidence that he should lecture in town 
at this time, but if Ichabod had failed to 
187 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


produce that poster — I cannot speak of it! 

“To be brief — I explained to him our in- 
tense ambition to outwit T8, and asked him 
to let me use this magniphone tonight — for 
it’s morning now! I promised to be finan- 
cially responsible for its safe return, which 
he construed to mean that if it got smashed 
by the Sophs, my Dad would make good. 
He was glad to accommodate me, and said 
that my father would be better pleased if I 
succeeded in this stunt than he was when he 
heard of my reverse touchdown! 

“Now, members of 1919, let us to work, 
for we shall gain a record of the Sophomore 

colors, spoken in the voices of ” 

“Has this wild night turned what little 
mind you possess, Hicks ?” demanded Butch 
indignantly. “How can you get a record — 
you didn’t borrow any recordagraph, because 
the detective had none! You can overhear 
188 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


the conversation of the class meeting, with 
this magniphone, but — as to getting a per- 
manent record ” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., lowering his voice, 
announced thrillingly: 

“The dictaphone ! By the dictaphone, over 
in the Gym office, I shall secure a record, in 
the Sophomores’ voices, of what colors T8 
chooses tonight in the class meeting! And 
once I possess that fatal record — well, I have 
a plan that I believe will bring marvelous 
results I” 

Quite justifiably, the spectral Ichabod, be- 
lieving that the beaming Hicks had appro- 
priated his thunder, grew excited, and his 
Adam’s apple did a war dance on his long 
neck, bobbing up and down ridiculously. 

"Dictaphone !” he shrilled wildly. Hicks, 
I thought of that detacative scheme, now, 

didn’t I, Butch ? It’s not fair ” 

189 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

“Pause, Ichabod !” requested Hicks, as the 
tall Freshman threatened to wax vociferous. 
“Your idea is what gave me an inspiration, 
and you aided by telling of the lecture, so all 
the glory is yours ! But your plan, you re- 
member, was to use the dictaphone only, and 
to place it in the Sophs’ class-meeting room — 
you admit, that was out of the question. 

“My plan is this — since we have no record- 
agraph, to use our ingenuity and make one ! 
While by the dictagraph — ^the magniphone — 
we can learn the Sophomore colors, we should 
not have any proof of our feat, in case they 
change them before Color Day ! 

“By my idea, we shall get a record, even 
as though we had a recordagraph, for we 
shall invent one; fellows, we have got to get 
this magniphone safely wired and hidden to- 
night, and we must test out the dictaphone, 

to see if my inspiration works ” 

190 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


Butch Brewster seized the shadow-like 
Hicks in a firm grip. 

*Will you tell us how we are to get that 
record,” he demanded, “and cease babbling 
about it, or must I ” 

Hicks, gaining his release by a fervid 
promise to enlighten their darkened intellects, 
picked up the coil of wire and pointed to the 
disc that gave forth the conversations. 

“You know the sound comes out here, at 
almost the natural volume in which the voice 
makes it ! Also, any noise zve make cannot 
be transmitted to the History room, unless 
we rig this up backwards ! By bringing the 
Gym office dictaphone to Ichabod’s room, 
where we shall install the batteries and the 
talking end of the magniphone, putting on a 
blank record, ready to start the machine any 
instant, we shall get the fatal record of ’i8’s 
colors ! 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“How ? By holding this disc, from which 
the sound comes, close to the funnel of the 
dictaphone, with the blank record ready ! By 
starting and stopping the dictating machine 
at will, we shall get just the evidence we 
want ! And once we have that record ” 

There was an awed silence, as the magni- 
tude of the achievement, if it succeeded, 
dawned on the other Freshmen. Of course, 
there was a chance the plan might be dis- 
covered, but everything was in their favor ! 

“Hicks,” said Butch Brewster slowly, “I 
take it all back, you are worth something to 
your class! I foresee how you will corral 
glory in a measure that will far exceed what 
your football playing lost! You will be fa- 
mous, and your wonderful deed shall echo 
down the corridors of Time, a Bannister 
tradition! With this record, you will con- 
quer the Sophomores, and hold them up to 


192 


HICKS EXPLAINS 


greater ridicule than that to which you were 
exposed !” 

Now, it happened that Hicks’ plan differed 
slightly from the prediction of Butch, but 
the praise of his classmate impressed the 
sunny Freshman, and he did not utter the 
sentences his mind had framed; in fact, 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., was at that moment 
assailed by a mighty temptation, and because 
of it, he failed to tell his plans. 

“Lead on, mighty chief !” Beef bowed wor- 
shipfully to him. “The fate of ’i8 lies in 
thy hands, and we are but thy humble hench- 
men !” 

“Then — to work!” urged Hicks, briskly, 
as he awoke from his reverie. “In a brief 
time, we must have the magniphone and 
wires concealed, and running between Icha- 
bod’s retreat and the History classroom, and 
we must test the batteries, the apparatus, and 

193 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


its effect on the dictaphone. The latter we 
must take back to the Gym, and get it over 
here again tomorrow — I mean, today — while 
everyone is at supper ! 

“Because T8 totally fails to suspect the use 
of such modern methods, we have a big 
chance of success ! Don’t breathe the scheme 
to a soul — come, let’s get busy, for mischief 
is afoot!” 

The lengthy Ichabod, fairly paralyzed by 
the wonderful scheme that had originated in 
the brain of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. — that of 
hitching up the magniphone to the dicta- 
phone, and thereby getting a recordagraph — 
gazed at that slender, debonair youth with 
profound admiration beaming on his honest 
face. 

“Why, Hicks — ” he gasped, and from him 
no greater praise could have come, “you — 
you’d make a real detacative 1” 


194 


XI 

ICHABOD speaks! 

D ame fortune, following her tra- 
dition and favoring the brave, smiled 
on T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. The night was 
dark enough for such mysterious deeds as he 
plotted, all of the unsuspecting collegians but 
a few industrious grinds, such as Theophilus, 
had voted in favor of slumber — only here and 
there a light gleamed from the dormitory 
windows. 

The greatest danger might loom on the 
scene in the figure of old “Cyclops,” as the 
rheumatic night-watchman was classically 

195 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


named by the students, because he possessed 
but one eye. He had formerly served on the 
town police force, until the accident and the 
weight of years disqualified him, when he 
had taken up his more strenuous duties as 
nocturnal guardian of the Bannister College 
campus. 

With wonderful forethought, the brilliant 
Hicks had seen that Ichabod’s boudoir was 
an ideal base of operations. It was on the 
second floor of Creighton Hall, and at the 
extreme end of the corridor, in one wing of 
the building — the end of Recitation Hall, con- 
taining, on the first floor, the History class- 
room, was separated from the Freshman dor- 
mitory by an alleyway a few feet wide, so 
that from the window of Ichabod’s room to 
those of the Sophomore class meeting, would 
be a short distance. 

That wing of Creighton was overgrown 
196 


ICHABOD SPEAKS! 


with ancient ivy, from which Ichabod’s win- 
dows peered, and the thick leaves offered a 
concealment for the detectagraph wires. 
Hicks, reconnoitering the ground with an 
electric flashlight, found to his joy that the 
wires, after coming down the dormitory wall 
under the historic ivy, could run through a 
drainpipe under the boardwalk that passed 
through the alleyway. Up the face of Reci- 
tation Hall they could be hidden behind the 
rain-spout, passing back of the open shutter, 
into the History room. 

“No one will find them !” he whispered to 
Butch, who was acting as Hicks’ aide-de- 
camp. “And thanks to Uncle Jimmy’s love 
for that antique bookcase, the very window 
we shall use is half-hidden behind it — no one 
in the room can detect the wires, while out- 
side the shutter will serve !” 

“Uncle Jimmy” Reese, the venerable. 


197 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


revered History instructor, was extremely 
absent-minded, and as he had left at least 
two windows unlocked, the Napoleonic Hicks 
was not forced to employ burglaric methods 
of entrance. Crawling in, he made sure, 
with his flashlight, that the old bookcase was 
in the corner, blotting out, from the interior, 
most of the needed window by the rain-spout. 

‘All right, Butch !” breathed the inde- 
fatigable Hicks, writhing over the window- 
sill into his bulky comrade’s arms. “Uncle 
Jimmy hasn’t moved that Noah’s Ark book- 
case for a decade, and as the window needs 
to be raised only an inch, we seem safe ! Get 
on the trail of a ladder — the hard work will 
be to persuade the wires down the face of 
Creighton, under the ivy!” 

With the reconnoitering finished, the 
Freshmen, directed by that master strate- 
gian, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., started an 
198 


ICHABOD SPEAKS* 


active campaign of labor. The electric bat- 
teries and the speaking end of the magni- 
phone were left in Ichabod’s room, the wires 
followed the route planned, and after entering 
the History room, the receiving disc was 
carefully hidden behind the bookcase. The 
entire apparatus was carefully concealed, and 
unless some unforeseen calamity collided 
with their plans, success seemed within their 
grasp ! 

Pudge having brought the dictaphone and 
blank records from the Gymnasium office to 
Ichabod’s retreat, all was ready for the offi- 
cial test of the Hicks magniphone-dicta- 
phone-recordagraph. 

‘T’ll get records to replace those we use,” 
announced Hicks, as they assembled in the 
dormitory room. “Professor Holden should 
gladly donate them to the cause of ’19, how- 
ever! All this outfit must be taken down 


14 


199 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


after we get the state secrets of ’i8, but we 
won’t mind, if we succeed ! 

“Ichabod, I unanimously elect you as the 
one who must venture forth to the History 
room — introduce that longitude of yours 
through the second window, and when you 
see me flash this light — thus — then you talk!’* 
“Simply talk!” added Beef, humorously. 
“Don’t sing, or awaken the college with that 
steam-calliope voice of yours ! Speak in the 
same tones the Sophomores would use, and 
insert a whisper, for a true test — we can’t 
ask you to talk in a natural voice, for that’s 
impossible! Hicks, you might invent a de- 
vice to hear the Sophs think ” 

“No need of it,” responded Hicks, with a 
grin. “They never do it, Beef !” 

Having allowed several minutes for Icha- 
bod to insinuate his serpentine self into the 
History classroom, the Freshman leader sig- 


200 


ICHABOD SPEAKS I 


naled from the dormitory window, the flash- 
light laying a gleaming finger athwart the 
outside darkness for an instant. Then, with 
the disc of the magniphone held two inches 
from the funnel of the dictaphone, on which 
a blank record had been placed, the Freshmen 
waited in breathless silence — this was the 
great test of Hicks’ ingenious invention ! 

At last a voice, apparently in the room with 
them, spoke suddenly : 

“Feller Sophomores! We have gathered 
together on this momentous occasion to de- 
cide ” 

The four Freshmen had started nervously 
at the sound, and looked at each other guilt- 
ily; Hicks, however, had presence of mind 
enough to start the dictaphone, and the blank 
cylinder revolved as Ichabod continued: 

“ — on our class colors for the illustrious 
class of 1918 during its glorious career at 


201 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

Old Bannister ! We have outwitted the fool- 
ish Freshmen, led by the brainless wonder, 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., who scored a touch- 
down for ’i8 by his brilliant ” 

“I think that will do!” stated Hicks sud- 
denly, while his companions laughed, and he 
rather hastily closed the dictaphone to Icha- 
bod’s confidences, which seemed inclined to 
be of a personal nature, “Anyhow, fellows, 
the magniphone is perfect, and now to test 
the dictaphone record we have made ! Say, 
won’t that garrulous string-bean ever stop 
talking?” 

As Hicks had neglected to advise his class- 
mate of a signal to cease conversing and re- 
turn, the accommodating Ichabod, who could 
hold all world’s records for speed in this 
event, was now directing the flood of speech 
into channels for his own entertainment. His 
shrill voice kept pouring a bewildering 


202 


ICHABOD SPEAKS! 


stream of talk into the dormitory room, where 
his convulsed colleagues were helpless with 
laughter. 

“ — And the first principle of detacative 
work — ” he announced eloquently, “is, to un- 
derstand the great importance of seemingly 
trifling clues and objects ! Every detacative 
must examine with care the most infinites- 
imal things on the scene of a crime, and 
make his deductions from ” 

“Come on, fellows!” gasped the dazed 
Hicks, disconnecting the magniphone bat- 
teries, so that Ichabod’s second-hand lecture 
ceased, at that end of the wires. “We have 
got to shut him off, or he will alarm the col- 
lege. That’s one handicap of our detecta- 
phone, we can’t make Ichabod ring ofif !” 

To their dismay they beheld, on reaching 
the campus, the swinging lantern of old Cy- 
clops, who was hobbling toward the Recita- 


203 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


tion Hall, having heard, while on his rounds, 
mysterious and blood-chilling sounds that 
originated in the History room. Transfixed 
with terror, the Freshmen crowded into the 
alleyway — with Ichabod apprehended, an in- 
vestigation would result, and their hopes of 
getting T8’s colors might be lost! 

Ichabod could not be warned! Helpless, 
his classmates stood in their concealment, 
watching the agitated night-watchman bear- 
ing down on the scene — ever, as he drew 
near, from the darkness within, the elongated 
Freshman’s voice echoed hollowly as he de- 
clared: 

“One great power a detacative must pos- 
sess is the ability to shadow an offender, with- 
out himself being observed ! William J. 
Burns says ” 

It was indeed awe-inspiring, to hear, shat- 
tering the solemn stillness of the dark hour. 


204 


ICHABOD SPEAKS! 


Ichabod’s grandiloquent flights of speech 
winging from the inky blackness of the His- 
tory room. Old Cyclops, with a remarkable 
imitation of courage, drew his revolver 
bravely, held up his lantern after the Goddess 
of Liberty fashion, and peered blinkingly into 
the classroom. 

“Hey, what’s goin’ on here ?” he demanded, 
the lantern and the revolver holding a wob- 
bling match, with dishonors even. “What 
f er is them queer doin’s in there, eh ? Mighty 
’spicious, I say! Will ye come ’long peace- 
able, now ? If ye’ resist, blood will flow !” 

While a member of the town police force, 
in fact, half of it, the night-watchman had 
earned immortal fame by his thrilling slogan, 
and, unconsciously, he repeated it now. 
Years back, when a victorious Bannister 
eleven piled off the “Owl” train at two a. m., 
to be met by a horde of joyous collegians, the 
205 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


courageous limb of the law had tremblingly 
faced the wild host on the station platform, 
drawn his revolver — which was never loaded, 
and under no conditions would he have used 
— and quavered : 

“No demonstratin’, boys ! Disperse peace- 
able, or blood will flow!” 

Blood did not flow, however, but the ex- 
cited collegians did — toward the detraining 
football heroes, and the doughty guardian 
of the peace was harmlessly swept to one 
side, where he kept muttering doggedly :i 
“Blood will flow, I warn ye, blood will 
flow !” 

“Don’t bother me, Cyclops!” responded 
Ichabod wrathfully, with a rare presence of 
mind that was unexpected. “It’s a burnin’ 
shame a feller can’t practice his oration with- 
out bein’ bothered! There’s no show in the 
daytime for the pesky Sophs, and here after 
206 


ICHABOD SPEAKS! 


midnight, when nothin’ should interfere, you 
come along!” 

Cyclops, accustomed to hearing embryo 
Ciceros and Demostheneses declaiming in the 
two literary societies’ halls, in preparation for 
oratorical contests, was deluded by Ichabod’s 
irritated mood. 

“Well, ye’d better climb out !” he ordered, 
more calmly, since no danger threatened. 
“Ye’ got no right foolin’ roun’ the campus at 
this unearthly hour, anyway ! If ye’ want to 
orate, go out on the athletic field an’ spout in 
the grandstand — ^nobuddy’ll bother ye there, 
I’ll vow!” 

Grumbling to himself, Cyclops hobbled 
away, and the relieved Ichabod crawled 
through the window, hurrying to his room, 
where he was joined in a few minutes by 
his fellow-plotters, who made his honest face 
glow with joy as they assured him earnestly 


207 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


that not even Sherlock Holmes could have 
extricated himself so cleverly from such an 
awkward position! Firmly convinced that 
the faith of the Bedwell Center folks in his 
detacative powers was fully justified, the 
lengthy Freshman beamed on his comrades. 

“Now I” Hicks, master - of - ceremonies, 
donned the head-gear, like that of a telephone 
switch-board operator, of the dictaphone — 
used by the one translating the dictation 
from the records to the typewriter. “This is 
the supreme test, fellows — ^here goes I” 

“It works!” rejoiced Beef, judging cor- 
rectly from the beatific expression of tense 
rapture that adorned Hicks’ cherubic coun- 
tenance. “Hicks’ great Sophomore-trap is 
a howling success !” 

“No, a talking one. Beef,” corrected the 
gratified Hicks, as each Freshman was given 
the exquisite pleasure of hearing again Icha- 
208 


ICHABOD SPEAKS! 


bod’s oration about the ’i8 colors, and the 
famous touchdown. “We must put the dicta- 
phone back in the Gym office, and one of us 
can get it during supper; tonight, slip into 
Ichabod’s room, one at a time, before 
eight ” 

“Nobody ever comes here, much,” stated 
Ichabod, “so there’s no danger of the magni- 
phone bein’ discovered, or bein’ detected, in- 
stead of doin’ that itself !” 

“Hicks will roost on the pinnacle of Fame 1” 
Pudge executed a ponderous dance of tri- 
umph, “Why, after we wear ’i8’s colors on 
Color Day, and every upper-classman has 
listened to the record, showing how we got 
them, Jack Merritt and the Sophs will be 
ridiculed unmercifully I” 

“It’s the greatest stunt ever done at Old 
Bannister I” declared Butch, seriously. 
“Think of Hicks hitching up the two inven- 


209 


■T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


tions to form a recordagraph ! Won’t the 
Sophomores be jeered, when it is known how 
Hicks sat up here, quietly, and at ease, listen- 
ing to them revealing class secrets ! Hicks, 
you will reap enough glory from this to last 
for years, and the memory of your touch- 
down will be forever obliterated!” 

“I am not going to — ” began Hicks, then 
paused, and left his sentence suspended in 
mid-air, to the disappointment of his col- 
leagues. 

“What were you starting to say?” queried 
Pudge, curiously. 

“Oh, nothing!” responded the Freshman 
leader. “I changed my mind!” 

“It would have been nothing, all right,” 
grinned Butch Brewster. “And if you 
changed your mind in that brief space, now I 
know what I always have believed — you 
haven’t much mind in stock !” 


210 


ICHABOD SPEAKS! 


His classmates would have been tremen- 
dously surprised to know that a great temp- 
tation, one that made him suddenly re- 
frain from finishing his sentence, possessed 
the sunny, straightforward T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr. 


XII 

HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 

W HEN the strategic Hicks, after ren- 
dering a creditable imitation of hard 
study that night until nearly eight o’clock, 
stealthily made his way to the rendezvous, he 
found that an intensely excited quartette of 
Freshmen had foregathered in the lengthy 
Ichabod’s room. 

After being admitted, he saw big Butch 
Brewster striding up and down, like a sentry 
on his beat. Beef sat staring at the dicta- 
phone, which he had brought over during 
supper. Pudge blundered around like a great. 


212 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


aimless beetle, while the would-be sleuth from 
Bedwell Center, Pennsylvania, sat down and 
popped up with amazing rapidity and a Jack- 
in-the-box effect. 

Closing and locking the door, the blithe- 
some T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., staggered to 
the dictaphone, an expression of keen sorrow 
on his countenance, and tragedy exuding 
from every pore, while his alarmed class- 
mates waited in breathless silence and sus- 
pense. 

“Fellows — ” gasped Hicks, seemingly 
crushed by the terrific weight of some 
mighty sorrow, “on the way over — I found 
out that — Oh, I just can’f tell you the awful 
discovery I made! You will never forgive 
me for ” 

The terrified Freshmen, positive that some 
tremendous calamity had befallen them, and 
imagining all manner of dire accidents to 


213 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


the magniphone wires, waited in stunned 
silence, while their sorrowful leader retired 
to a safe distance from Butch Brewster. 

‘It is terrible !” he groaned, pointing to a 
most lurid example of neckwear that spoke 
vociferously for itself. “I found out that I 
have worn this same scarf to supper for two 
consecutive days ! Think of it, fellows, twice 
in succession have I adorned myself with the 
same ” 

Just as the enraged Butch, followed by the 
equally volcanic Beef, charged the grinning 
Hicks, to wreak dire vengeance on his mos- 
quito structure, the alarmed Freshman leader 
was saved by his own invention; at that 
perilous instant a sound came from the mag- 
niphone, which had been connected with the 
batteries. Some one had entered the History 
classroom, the door slammed noisily, and 
then — a thunderous silence. 


214 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


“You chaps act like you expected news of 
friends lost at sea!” chortled the debonair 
Hicks, as he surveyed them. “Here — let us 
stage the great Bannister drama entitled, 
‘The Stolen Colors’ ! Hold the disc close to 
the dictaphone funnel, Pudge — they’ll pile 
into the classroom now. Keep it steady, for 
I’m all prepared to start this machine at the 
psychological moment !” 

From the magniphone sounded a scuffling 
of feet, the tumult of voices, laughter, and 
snatches of excited conversation ; then a hush, 
and Jack Merritt’s voice, as he officially called 
the class meeting to order, and announced 
the reading of the last meeting’s minutes. 

Hicks, as serene as though the moment was 
not charged with terrific thrills, posed grace- 
fully, ready, however, to start the dictaphone 
at the earliest intimation that something 
worth recording was on the way. For a time 
15 215 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


there was only the usual routine business — 
reports of committees, of the Treasurer, and 
details that bored excessively the agitated 
Freshmen, who dreaded hearing, at any in- 
stant, some Sophomore loudly announce the 
uninvited presence of the mysterious wires. 

“Now, fellow Sophomores — ” President 
Merritt’s voice became so dignified that in 
Ichabod’s room Hicks instinctively poised his 
finger to start the dictaphone, “we have come 
to the most important part of our meeting, 
the announcement of the official colors, 
selected by a majority vote, for the illustrious 
Class of 1918, during the rest of its glorious 
career at Old Bannister. Thanks to our 
clever method of knowing the color combina- 
tions under consideration by certain numbers, 
we have been able to ” 

In the dormitory room across the alleyway, 
in Creighton, the smiling Hicks had started 
216 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


the dictaphone, and Pudge Langdon held, 
with trembling hand, the magniphone disc 
close to the dictation funnel; as the blank 
record revolved. Jack Merritt, in most sonor- 
ous tones, dictated momentous secrets of 1918 
to — the Freshmen! 

“ — ^vote for our colors,” continued the 
Sophomore leader, “right before those help- 
less mortals, the insignificant Freshmen! I 
believed Butch Brewster’s futile tackle of 
that heedless, misguided Hicks slammed all 
of his sensational ideas out of him — since 
that ridiculous touchdown, he has kept most 
wonderfully quiet !” 

“Oh, we have outwitted them, all right!” 
Heavy Hughes’ deep voice boomed over the 
wires to the delighted Freshmen. “And 
we’ll haze them hard, just to make them re- 
member that we are their masters! It’s a 
burning shame we can not get at Hicks, but 


217 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


as Jack says, that scatter-brained nonentity 
they own as class-leader is considerably sub- 
dued of late !” 

Hicks, with a beatific smile, made sure the 
dictaphone was running smoothly, moved 
Pudge’s hand nearer the funnel, and then 
the waiting Freshmen heard 

“ — The result of the voting for class 
colors — ” beautifully clear and distinct was 
Jack Merritt’s voice, flowing over the magni- 
phone wires and into that fatal record — “is 
that combination three, has received a 
majority of thirty votes ; therefore, the official 
colors for the Class of 1918, during its course 
at Bannister College, are — orange and 
black r 

The tremendous applause, with whistling, 
cheers, and stamping of feet, threatened to 
wreck the dictaphone, and Hicks, with a 
triumphant gesture, turned off the machine 
218 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


until the riot subsided. No matter what 
happened now, he had the precious record — 
there, inscribed on that innocent-looking 
black cylinder, was the fate of 1918 ! 

The Freshmen caught a few more sen- 
tences, Sophomore exultations, plans for 
keeping the colors at a town member’s home 
until the morning of Color Day, then bring- 
ing them up to college for the second-year 
class to wear in chapel, and other details. 
Then the meeting of the Sophomores ad- 
journed, but that of the insignificant, yet joy- 
ous five members of 1919, over in Ichabod’s 
room, held a longer session ! 

“We have done it!” breathed Beef, awed 
by the achievement. “All this apparatus 
must be taken down, and the dictaphone re- 
turned to the Gym office, but what do we care 
— Hicks’ glory is assured I We’ll wear ’i8’s 
colors on Color Day, and when the upper- 


219 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAK 


classmen harken to this record, Hicks will 
be famous !” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., in a strange 
silence, removed the dictaphone record that 
was to encompass the downfall of 1918, and 
gazed at it thoughtfully. His happy class- 
mates waited smilingly for his usual con- 
fident, matter-of-fact fashion of acknowledg- 
ing that the success of his brilliant exploit 
had been a foregone conclusion — Butch, 
whom Hicks’ calm assurance always aroused, 
was ready to crush his blithesome friend 
with some mildly sarcastic remarks, but the 
unexpected happened. 

“I’ll take this with me, fellows,” said Hicks, 
slowly, still studying the record gained by 
his wonderful ingenuity. “Later, Butch, I 
may need you. Beef, and Pudge; we’ll take 
the wires down when the college is asleep. 
Now that we have succeeded, and gotten the 


220 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


fatal record, I want to be alone for a while 
— I want to think !” 

The weird fact that the cheery Hicks was 
actually in earnest paralyzed his comrades, 
and not even Butch voiced the sentiment that 
such a thing as the toothpick Freshmen de- 
sired was, for their heedless friend, a mental 
impossibility. In sheer bewilderment, yet 
positive that Hicks was not hoaxing them 
this time, the four first-year collegians stood, 
in utter quiet, and watched the slender youth 
walk from the room. 

“Queer I” growled Beef, exceedingly wor- 
ried. “Just at the moment when he ought 
to torture us with that ‘Oh-I-knew-I-could- 
do-it’ attitude of his, he wants to think! And 
the worst of it is, fellows, Hicks is really seri- 
ous this time — that in itself is a real trag- 
edy!” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., standing by the 


221 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


window of his room, a few moments later, 
the scatter-brained youth whom none of the 
collegians would have accused of ever enter- 
taining hospitably a serious thought, was 
fighting a mighty battle against a terrible 
temptation. 

The generous, loyal Freshman, with all his 
love for his friends, was intensely human, 
and the power contained in that harmless 
appearing black cylinder, the means it repre- 
sented of gaining boundless glory, tempted 
him strongly to do something contrary to his 
true nature ! 

“Why not?” he meditated. “Butch, Beef, 
Pudge, and Ichabod — the only fellows who 
know of this record, fully expect me to have 
the Freshman triumph on Color Day, and 
then to achieve fame and glory by exposing 
the marvelous feat! They believe I expect 
to redeem myself, to erase the ignoble mem- 


222 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


ory of that touchdown, by letting the Juniors 
and Seniors hear this record, so they will 
know by what modern methods I got the ’i8 
colors !” 

His four admiring friends would tell every- 
where the story of his great inspiration, his 
deed would become a Bannister traditon, he, 
a campus idol ; in after years, the alumni at 
Commencement Class would narrate how 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., sat calmly and cap- 
tured the Sophomore colors, by an ingenious 
invention! Never again could the 1918 
students jeer at him, and shout: “The grand- 
eur that was T9, and the glory that was 
Hicks!” 

Then a sentence from the magniphone — 
now held in that record — came vividly to 
mind — Heavy’s, when he boomed: “And 
we’ll haze them hard, just to make them 
remember that we are their masters !” 


223 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


After Color Day, if he gained glory for 
himself by making public the dictaphone 
record, the enraged Sophomores would haze 
harder than ever — once the record became 
known, and the 1918 students ridiculed, it 
would be useless, save as a means of winning 
fame for Hicks. But if the cheerful Fresh- 
man could sacrifice his love of glory by hold- 
ing that fatal record as a power to sway the 
Sophomores, through fear of exposure 

“Which shall I do?” murmured the per- 
turbed Hicks, striding up and down the tiger- 
skin rug. “After we triumph on Color Day, 
let Butch and the other three tell of my stunt, 
permit the upper-classmen to hear the record, 
or — thrust aside all hope of glory, and by 
agreeing to keep this record silent, if Jack 
Merritt will promise to cease hazing, save 
my classmates from persecution?” 

There was no doubt but that Jack, rather 


224 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


than have the campus ridicule heaped on him 
and his class, would do almost anything to 
keep that dictaphone record from speaking! 
The Freshmen would triumph on Color Day, 
and would be spared any future hazing, if the 
truth of how the colors were obtained would 
be suppressed. But — that would mean Hicks 
must give up his cherished dream of glory, 
and the erasing from his record of that one 
blot — the reverse touchdown I 

“Shall I sacrifice my chums on the altar of 
my ambition ?” he demanded, pausing before 
his study-table. “Or give up the glory that 
is mine, and save them from hazing?” 

A volume of Shakespeare lay on the table, 
open at the play of Hamlet, which the Fresh- 
man English class was studying; Hicks’ eye 
caught the famous advice of old Polonius 
to his son, Laertes, and he read it several 
times as he stood, the record in his hands : 


225 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“ — ^To thine ownself be true, and it must 
follow, as the day the night, thou canst not 
then be false to any man!” And, the part 
where the statesman says — “Those friends 
thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple 

them to thy soul with hoops of steel ” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., carefully placed 
the precious record on the study-table, exe- 
cuted a joyous dance about the room, and 
finished at the window, where he gazed out 
at the gleaming dormitory lights, the well- 
loved campus, with the moonlight silvering 
the buildings of old Bannister. 

“Thanks, Bill !” he murmured softly, shed- 
ding his somber mood, and emerging his old, 
sunny self. “Just in time, old man ! I’ll be 
true to myself, and then I just can’t be false 
to my classmates, to those poor, nervous fel- 
lows who dread hazing ! 

“‘Those friends thou hast,’ eh? Well, I 
226 


HICKS MAKES A SACRIFICE 


guess I have tried the adoption — whatever 
that is — of many Freshmen, and I’ll 'grapple 
them to my soul’ with this record, by making 
the Sophs cease hazing! I had a narrow 
squeak from going back on my chums, but 
old Bill Shakespeare saved me! Rah for 
Shakespeare !” 

In his exuberance at having won, with 
such a valuable reinforcement, the battle 
against a temptation to sacrifice his friends 
for his own glory, Hicks hurled a fusillade 
of pillows doorward, just as the portal was 
pushed open, and Butch Brewster’s worried 
countenance appeared. With a wild whoop 
of joy, T. Haviland Hicks dragged his friend 
into the room, shook his hand violently, and 
announced, to Butch’s mystification: 

“Hicks and Shakespeare won. Butch ! 
The Freshmen are saved— now to let Jack 
Merritt hear this record, and to get his prom- 


227 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


ise to stop hazing, if we keep this silent!” 

“Stop thumping on me, you lunatic!” 
howled the vastly relieved Butch, rejoicing 
to see his comrade himself again. “What 
do you mean by talking of keeping the record 
silent? Hicks — ^you don’t mean — ^you can’t 
mean that you will give up your great oppor- 
tunity if Jack will promise ” 

“Oh, just leave it to me, old man,” re- 
sponded Hicks, gayly. “You cannot follow 
the intricate mechanism of my colossal brain 
in its workings, but let me explain, with the 
aid of a chart and pointer, my plan, so that 

you will see dimly ” 

Then Butch Brewster, knowing that what- 
ever stress Hicks had suffered, all was well 
at last, fell upon the grinning Freshman and 
smote him hip and thigh, until T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., expressed a noisy desire to arbi- 
trate. 


228 


XIII 

A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 

C OME in!” 

Jack Merritt, who was intensely in- 
terested in the strenuous career of one 
Ulysses as he plunged from one thrilling 
experience into the next, assisted by Mr. 
Homer, looked up from his book as a rather 
imperious knock sounded. The Sophomore 
leader, who was vastly satisfied with himself 
and things in general at that moment, smiled 
complacently at T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., who, 
though but an humble Freshman, made an 
entrance greatly resembling the triumphal 


229 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


entr}^ of warlike Julius Caesar into Rome. 

“Well, mighty hero of the gridiron!” 
hailed the exuberant Jack. “Lowly and in- 
significant Freshman — what would ye have 
of the glorious Sophomores’ chieftain, that 
ye thus presume to invade his den ?” 

The second-year collegian, in truth, re- 
garded the blithesome Hicks as merely a 
good-natured, friendly, and utterly futile 
mortal, and in his own joyous state of being, 
his attitude toward the splinter Freshman 
was a mild, tolerant one. Not having asso- 
ciated with the cheerful youth, as had Butch 
Brewster, Jack Merritt had not learned the 
real depth of the pestersome troubadour. 

“Oh, nothing much, friend Grand Mogul,” 
responded Hicks, blithely, by way of recalling 
to Jack’s mind the exceedingly pleasant haz- 
ing episode memory. “I just drifted in to 
let you know that ’i8’s choice of colors meets 


230 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


with my important approval ! In spite of the 
popular belief that we are supposed to be 
green, Jack, I feel that we Freshmen will 
look simply adorable, adorned with orange 
and black!” 

The care-free Hicks could not have petri- 
fied the stunned Jack Merritt more effectively 
had he imitatd Proteus, and changed to a pink 
baby elephant with purple wings, though the 
gentleman referred to probably never as- 
sumed that startling disguise. 

“You — you know, then!” articulated the 
dazed Sophomore, but he recovered a trifle 
as a thought assailed his benumbed intellect. 
“Oh, you are brilliant, Hicks, but you have 
shown your hand too soon! I suppose you 
understand that we can select new colors 
between now and Color Day?” 

“I never suppose,” said Hicks, pleasantly. 
“But — if you are interested in knowing hoxv 


16 


231 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


we learned your class colors, and will give 
your word of honor not to call any of your 
classmates while we show you, I will let you 
hear a most beautiful selection! In return, 
I guarantee you a safe round trip to the Gym 
office — there, we can talk business! Come 
on, you don’t fear a Freshman?” 

Jack deliberated — the terrible truth ap- 
palled him, for beyond the skeleton of a 
doubt, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr,, in that mys- 
terious way of his, had actually stolen the 
1918 colors ! In order to save himself and his 
class, if possible, he must know just what he 
faced, so he decided to accept the kind in- 
vitation of the cheery Hicks. 

“I’ll go, Hicks,” he answered. “You have 
my word of honor not to act until I am in my 
room again ; I have your word that nothing 
will happen to me on this expedition. After 
I know just how you got our colors, despite 
232 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


our apparently infallible scheme, I’ll be able 
to fight you !” 

“Come on!” grinned Hicks, starting an- 
other Hicks’ Personally Conducted Tour. 
“Although Thanksgiving is over, I believe 
you will be ready to ‘talk turkey,’ as the say- 
ing goes, when you have listened to the most 
melodious voice in captivity!” 

Mystified, the bewildered Sophomore pres- 
ident accompanied Hicks from Smithson, 
across to the gymnasium, where they silently 
ascended from the basement locker-room to 
the main floor, and across it to the office. 
Here, with the curtains drawn, stood that 
Herculean trio — Butch, Beef, and Pudge, 
ably guarding what Jack recognized as the 
instructor’s dictaphone. 

“It’s a trap !” he panted, but Hicks quickly 
assured him that he had not entered an am- 
bush, and the Sophomore allowed himself to 

233 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

be seated before the machine. The receiver 
was placed over his head and at his ears, Beef 
and Pudge held his arms, Butch adjusted the 
fatal record, and all waited for that master- 
of -ceremonies, Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr. 

“Harken to thy master’s voice!” chirped 
the lathe-like Freshman, starting the dicta- 
phone. “For you. Jack Merritt, have over- 
thrown yourself! Listen, and then tell us 
if you still believe Butch’s tackle slammed all 
the ideas out of that heedless, misguided 
Hicks!” 

Perforce, Jack harkened, and as Beef 
afterward stated, it was worth the price of 
admission to watch the conflicting emotions 
that sprinted across his expressive coun- 
tenance. Wrath, curiosity, fury, and hope- 
less despair, succeeded each other, as the 
voice he recognized as his own revealed to 
him the awful secret! When it was ended, 


234 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


and Butch held the precious cylinder in his 
possession, the subdued Sophomore stared at 
Hicks, and said grimly : 

"Well?” 

"Hear the ultimatum — ” T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., was master now, and he drove 
home his words with sledge-hammer force. 
"You heard that record. Jack Merritt, and 
you realized what terrific ridicule will be 
heaped on you and your class, if it is given 
to the collegians ! You know it will be futile 
to change the colors, since we possess abso- 
lute proof that we stole them, and by a sen- 
sational means that will make us famous ! 

"We four Freshmen, with Ichabod, alone 
know the terrible secret; whether or not 
every Junior and Senior, and every alumnus 
who comes to Bannister shall hear your 
charming voice, pronouncing your own 
doom, rests with you. We will put a price 


235 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


on our silence, and if you agree to pay it. 
Jack — then you may save yourself from tor- 
ture! The jeers and laughter I endured 
after my touchdown won’t be a thousandth 
-of what will be your share, if this becomes 
public, and you know it 1” 

“Well?” growled the wilted Sophomore. 
“What is the price of your silence, Hicks? 
What will assure me that the record will not 
be heard by any more than the ones who have 
already done so?” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., faced his con- 
quered rival, and quietly, but impressively, 
named the conditions. 

“Only two things we demand,” he stated, 
“and one you must really do, in any event, 
since we have evidence of having stolen the 
right colors. First — make no effort to 
change your class colors; let them stand, 
mention their being stolen to no one, and 
236 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


we Freshmen will triumph on Color Day — a 
foregone conclusion, as you will agree. 

“Second — promise that all hazing shall 
cease at once, and shall not be resumed unless 
we break the agreement by letting someone 
hear this record ! You can make your class 
abandon hazing, and that is not an unreason- 
able command, since 1918 has already done 
more and harder hazing than was necessary, 
and more than any past class ever did. You 
can keep quiet about the colors, and with 
Babe, Heavy, and Bucky Turner, whom you 
can convince it is a dire necessity, you can 
end hazing.” 

“And if I pledge you that those two con- 
ditions shall be fulfilled,” asked the humbled 
Sophomore, “what do you promise, Hicks, on 
your word of honor, in return ?” 

“This — ” said Hicks earnestly. “We five 
Freshmen will keep silent about this record. 


237 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


so long as you Sophomores refrain from 
hazing, and granting that we wear your 
colors on Color Day. If you keep your 
promises, no one else shall know of its ex- 
istence, and when we cease to be Fresh- 
men, the record, not having been shown to 
anyone, shall be delivered to you for 
destruction ! 

“You alone can fulfil the first condition, as 
to the colors, by keeping silence — by convinc- 
ing your aides that something awful vdll 
happen unless hazing stops, you can fulfil 
that term of the agreement. I will keep this 
record. Jack, and while none of the five will 
talk, even if they did, their tale would seem 
ridiculous, without the proof.” 

Jack Merritt meditated. He realized that 
what the debonair Hicks said was terribly 
true — in order to save himself and his class 
from endless ridicule, he must pay the price 
238 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


demanded for their silence. He could not 
change the colors, since Hicks could produce 
the record, and show that he had actually 
and sensationally stolen the official choice! 
After all, it would be far better to abandon 
hazing, than to expose ’i8 to the campus jeers 
and laughter I 

“Hicks!” an inspiration smote his brain 
amidships, a way by which his class could 
gracefully, and with honor, drop hazing. “If 
I give my pledge, and accept yours — to the 
conditions named, will you grant this — I will 
be free to find and smash that record, if I 
can ? And, if I once break it, then all pledges 
are automatically released?” 

“Sure!” grinned T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. 
“It will be exciting. Jack, to match my wits 
against yours, and to keep you from breaking 
the only record you will have a chance to 
smash at Bannister. And if you can shatter 

239 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


it, then everything is off, but — until you do, 
abide by the ultimatum, or suffer !” 

He explained in detail to the interested 
Sophomore just how the colors had been dis- 
covered, and enlarged on the evident truth 
that if the achievement became campus prop- 
erty, Jack and his classmates would be the 
targets for the darts of ridicule. 

“I’ll call on you later,” decided Jack, at 
last. “I want to convince my aide-de-camps, 
without revealing even to them my humilia- 
tion, that it will be wisest to cease hazing. 
It won’t be hard, as we have gone rather far, 
I confess, this year ; I’ll keep quiet about the 
colors, as I must, and no one will ever know 
how you stole them. Why, Hicks ” 

He hesitated, as a realization of something 
dawned on him, and gazed at the happy-go- 
lucky, grinning Hicks, admiration in his 
eyes. Without another word, the outgen- 


240 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


eraled Sophomore chieftain strode from the 
Gymnasium office, leaving the four Freshmen 
to congratulate each other. 

“So that was your idea !” exploded Butch 
Brewster. “You foolish fellow! Why, 
Hicks — our class has no such claim on you ! 
It won’t be wrong to go ahead and win glory 
by exposing Jack Merritt and ’ i8, and wiping 
out your ridiculous fiasco in football! I 
thought you had been tempted to do some- 
thing that was wrong!” 

“I was. Butch!” answered Hicks, softly. 
“A fellow who betrays his true self, who puts 
his thirst for glory and admiration above 
his love for his chums, does a great wrong! 
I promised to steal the class colors, suppress 
hazing, and win fame for myself, at one fell 
blow — ^well, I did the first two things, but 
the other must go by the board !” 

It was ten o’clock when Jack Merritt came 


241 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


to Hicks’ cozy room, where that sunny- 
souled, irrepressible Freshman was twanging 
his banjo, humming an excessively senti- 
mental song, and adding to his general repu- 
tation for uselessness. The Sophomore 
closed the door and held out his hand frankly, 
much to the indolent minstrel’s wonder. 

“I want to shake hands, Hicks,” said Jack, 
honest admiration on his attractive face. 
“After this year, when class lines are gone, 
I would like to be your chum ! I realize fully 
how you sacrificed yourself, your ambition to 
be famous, to blot out your failure on the 
gridiron, for the sake of protecting the more 
timid and weak ones of your class ! 

“I agree to the conditions, and pledge my 
honor that no change shall be made in thq 
colors, and that hazing will cease; under- 
stand, you five Freshmen must keep silent. I 
accept your word of honor, Hicks, that only 
242 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


we six shall hear that record, and that unless 
the Sophs wear different colors, or haze 
again, you will let me destroy it at Com- 
mencement, without it ever having been 
shown to anyone ! 

“And I know what it means to you — ” 
Jack went on, “to give up such a glorious 
opportunity to be a campus hero, by sacrific- 
ing your friends! Frankly, I’m afraid I 
would have let my class go, and corralled 
fame by letting that wonderful record be 
heard!” 

“Here’s my hand. Jack,” Hicks extended 
it with a sunny smile, “and my word of honor 
with it — for I will keep that record. If you 
really don’t believe I am as utterly useless as 
Butch vows I am. I’ll gladly be friends next 
year, when we are no longer class rivals. 
Of course, you can’t drop in on me often now, 
but all the same, you are heartily welcome !” 


243 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Jack paused at the door, and smiled back at 
the Freshman, who was staking out, with 
numerous pillows, a comfortable claim on the 
davenport, as he again unlimbered his banjo 
for action. 

“I warn you, old man,” he flung at his 
rival, “I am going to find that record, and 
smash it! It’s a long, long way to Com- 
mencement, and the end of your Freshman 
year I And once I shatter it, then look out, 
for the Sophomores will descend on your 
classmates like wolves on a sheepfold 1” 
“Then I’d feel quite sheepish,” declared 
the incorrigible Hicks. “Fear not, Jack — I, 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., will guard the fatal 
record with the same mighty brain that 
wrested the colors from your class-meeting 1” 
Two days later, the Bannister collegians 
were surprised at finding a large poster on 
the bulletin board ; it was couched in dignified 
244 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


terms, and was to the effect that the Class of 
1918, having decided hazing to be an un- 
necessary evil, had resolved to take the lead 
in abolishing it from Bannister College, 

They would give up, with a noble spirit of 
self-sacrifice, their privilege of hazing 1919, 
and do all in their power to create a lasting 
sentiment against the practice. The Class of 
’18, as usual, so the poster read, led in a 
praiseworthy effort for a better college, and 
asked the cooperation of upper-classmen. 
Faculty, and the Freshmen themselves! 
They championed a most laudable cause, and 
were sure, if all classes united, hazing could 
be made a thing of the past! 

“And Prexy is so glad!” growled Butch, 
as he and Hicks perused the noble, sublime 
document. “He will address us in chapel, 
and pat the Sophs on the head, figuratively, 
for their efforts in the cause of right ! Who- 


245 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

ever said that ‘necessity is the mother of 
invention’ was correct — only dire necessity 
made Jack Merritt dream of this way out!” 

“What care we, Butch?” gurgled the 
amused Hicks. “We are after effect, not 
the cause! Our classmates won’t be hazed 
any more, we’ll wear ’i8’s colors on Color 
Day, and gain glory, so let them surrender 
with all honors !” 

“If you let Jack Merritt smash that 
record — ” big Butch was ominous, “this 
noble, self-denying resolution of the Sopho- 
mores will be null and void so quickly as to 
take your breath! You have done a great 
deed, Hicks, and won my admiration by your 
sacrifice of glory, but — I can’t help remem- 
bering that horrible touchdown; I fear you 
with that fatal record in your posses- 
sion ” 

“Leave it to me, Butch!” assured the 
246 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


blithesome Hicks, and dodged away in time 
to escape the wrath of his friend. 

On Color Day, for the first time since ’04’s 
Freshman year, the class of 1919 upset 
tradition by flaunting the Sophomore colors, 
after those unsuspecting dignitaries had 
marched proudly into chapel, adorned with 
orange and black. Only Jack Merritt knew 
of the blow about to fall, and he wrath- 
fully vowed to smash that dictaphone rec- 
ord, and break Hicks’ power over his class- 
mates. 

Somehow, it was rumored that two Sopho- 
mores known to be of a loquacious nature 
had been overheard talking of the colors, by 
a lower-classman, and thus the Freshmen 
had stolen them — this story was not denied 
by the second-year leaders. Though the ac- 
cused duo most naturally and indignantly 
denied the allegation and defied the alliga- 


17 


247 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


tors, the story gained credence, and was gen- 
erally accepted as the truth. 

A few nights after Color Day, and just be- 
fore the Christmas vacation, “Dad” Rogers, 
a Senior, drifted into the room of the Fresh- 
man leader, and found Hicks, as usual, at 
ease on the davenport, supported by pillows, 
and devoting all his colossal intellect on the 
harmonious rendering, with banjo accom- 
paniment, of that classical selection, “Bingo.” 

“Hicks — ” Dad gazed at him quizzically, 
“don’t you ever intend to do something to 
sponge out that dark blot on your past — the 
weird touchdown you made? Aren’t you 
going to outwit Jack Merritt, and regain lost 
laurels? Or have you no ambition but to 
loaf around, making night hideous by your 
supposed singing? If a couple of Sophs 
hadn’t talked unwisely, your class would 
never have stolen ’i8’s colors! 

248 


A VICTORY UNPUBLISHED 


“And look at Jack Merritt — originating a 
movement to abolish hazing at Bannister, a 
movement enthusiastically supported by 

upper-classmen, alumni. Faculty, and ” 

“Freshmen !” finished T. Haviland Hicks, 
grinning. “Don’t doubt that we are in 
favor of it — now. Dad ! Listen, and Fll tell 

you why I don’t succeed ” 

The Junior was listening attentively, and 
the debonair Hicks went on ; 

“Dad — the secret of success is hard work, 
and I never could keep a secret !” 


XIV 

HICKS GETS A LETTER 

rpHOMAS HAVILAND HICKS, JR., 
* his splinter-like structure arranged 
with a graceful scenic effect on the steps of 
Creighton Hall, was occupied in the soul- 
satisfying pastime of doing nothing, in which 
he was very proficient. 

It was a glorious day in early April — the 
birds in the stately old elms of the Bannister 
campus rendered joyous operatic selections, 
the grass was as green as a newly landed 
immigrant, the air seemed fully as mild as a 
Central American revolution, and Nature’s 
250 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


mood was as sunny and cheerful as the blithe- 
some Freshman. 

“Springtime hath came — tra ! la !” warbled 
Hicks, unmelodiously and less grammatically. 
“My season of hard study is hereby ended, 
and once again I shed the somber garment 
of Care, to become festive and gay !” 

Miraculous as it sounds, the weeks since 
the Freshman triumph on Color Day had 
found T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., interested in 
what he designated a “study sprint.” The 
Christmas recess had passed quickly, Ban- 
nister College had opened for the second 
term, and as a result of some New Year’s 
resolutions, the pestersome Hicks betrayed 
a touching devotion to his studies. 

Its strings silent and uncaressed, the be- 
loved banjo hung on the wall — not for cen- 
turies had the debonair Freshman’s raucous 
voice awakened the echoes, and vociferous 

251 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


protests from the other collegians; his com- 
rades gathered in his cozy quarters as of old, 
but heedless of their noise and chaffing, Hicks 
exhibited a mysterious determination to ex- 
plore the hitherto undiscovered interiors of 
his books ! 

In truth, while the happy-go-lucky youth’s 
first-term record had been commendable, it 
had occurred to the naturally brilliant Hicks 
that his well loved Dad would be immensely 
pleased to have his son and heir lead his class, 
scholastically, as well as strategically. So, 
he had dived headlong into study ! 

His classmates undisturbed by the Sopho- 
mores, and the inevitably dull winter semes- 
ter before him, the slim Freshman had 
focused his scintillating intellect on the El 
Dorado of knowldege provided by the 
Faculty curriculum, to the delight of his 
paternal ancestor, the intense bewilderment 


252 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


of the aforesaid Faculty, and the incredulous 
joy of Butch Brewster. 

But now, with gladsome Spring invading 
the Bannister campus, T. Haviland Hicks, 
Jr., decided that he had acquired a sufficient 
momentum to bear him through to Com- 
mencement, and he cheerfully discarded all 
interest in such trifles as books, study, and 
learning. 

As he stretched out luxuriously in the 
warm sunshine, big Butch Brewster, in track 
togs and a heavy football blanket, lumbered 
out, followed by the similarly attired Beef, 
Pudge, Ichabod, and other Freshman cinder- 
path aspirants. The great Sophomore- 
Freshman track meet was not far distant, 
and grateful for this chance to do outdoor 
training, the first-year Mercuries had turned 
out in full force. 

“Hello, Hicks,” greeted Butch tenderly. 


253 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“you useless, scenery-marring nonentity ! 
Here is a letter that came for you on the 
three o’clock mail — I saw it under your door. 
As it is from Pittsburgh, I judge you have 
again wheedled a check from your long-suf- 
fering Dad !” 

“Thanks — terribly,” responded Hicks, as 
he lazily tore open the long envelope. 
“Butch, I would fain don such scanty habili- 
ments as you fellows possess, to hie me forth 
and cavort on the cinder-path, but I fear my 
wonderful prowess would arouse cankering 
envy, hence ” 

The splinter Freshman’s sudden cessation 
of speech was not due to a lack of words, but 
because of a mighty increase of interest in 
his father’s epistle. While his companions 
regarded in surprise the actually serious ex- 
pression that located itself on his cherubic 
countenance, Hicks earnestly perused the 

254 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


message again, and then stood gazing at it 
meditatively. 

“Why not ?” he murmured. “Perhaps he 
is right — there is a way ! And, Oh, he would 
be so happy ! Pll try hard — I’ll start in right 
now, and while it may take a long time. I’ll 
be sure to ” 

“What are you babbling about, Hicks?” 
demanded Pudge wrathfully. “Has this 
touch of springtime caused a mild madness 
to attack your microscopic brain ? Such in- 
coherent, meaningless ramblings as you are 
producing ” 

But T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. had been trans- 
formed from a careless, indolent youth into 
a veritable human dynamo ; with a shout, he 
leaped to his feet, rushed past his astounded 
classmates, and clattered upstairs. His com- 
rades stood for a few moments in bewilder- 
ment, staring silently at each other — then 
255 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


Butch, wise from experience with Hicks, 
moved away. 

“ ‘Waitful watching,’ fellows !” he grinned. 
“We can’t imagine what Hicks is up to now, 
but we must watch that he doesn’t brag his 
class into disgrace, and — until he explodes 
his mine — wait!” 

However, the ebullient Freshman, an hour 
later, so startled his classmates by a totally 
unexpected, yet apparently premeditated 
move, that Butch and the others quite forgot 
Hicks’ strange action on the reading of the 
letter. As Captain “Tug” Warren led the 
Freshman track squad around the cinder- 
path at an easy warming-up pace, T. Havi- 
land Hicks, Jr., attired modestly in a 
sweater, light trousers, and a pair of spiked 
shoes, burst upon the scene. 

“Aha, ‘the villain still pursues I’ ” ejacu- 
lated Butch dramatically, as Hicks appeared 
256 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


in the offing, while the track athletes chanted 
loudly, “Behold, the Conquering Hero 
Comes !” “Hicks, not content with handing 
the class football game to the Sophs by your 
woeful lack of athletic powers, you have come 
out to think up some way of giving them the 
track meet !” 

“Go to the foot of the class!” smiled the 
jaunty Hicks, as he pranced down the 
straightaway in what he fatuously believed 
to be the manner affected by famous sprinters 
while warming up. “I have come forth to 
train for the contest, I have sacrificed my 
love of ease, to do marvelous feats in the 
track and field events, for my class !” 

“Is there no relief ?” demanded Beef, while 
the other Freshmen groaned in unison. “I 
predict days of torture, with that unclassified 
athletic freak disporting on the track, and 
making of himself a colossal pest I” 


257 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


As a prophet, Beef was not to be without 
honor in his own country, for that afternoon 
was only the first of many in which T. Havi- 
land Hicks, Jr., tormented the track squad 
by his erratic training. His supreme ambi- 
tion — and he seemed destined to realize it — 
seemed to be to get in everybody’s way, and 
handicap the athletes so that they would 
never get into condition to star in Bannis- 
ter’s meets. 

Hicks lacked the most vague idea of what 
he wanted to do — he wandered aimlessly 
about the field, possessed of a fiendish desire 
to jog down the straightaway when a fast 
sprint was in progress. The toothpick 
Freshman endangered the lives of his fellow- 
collegians when he endeavored to heave the 
hammer, or to put the shot, both of which 
always hurtled in an entirely uncharted direc- 
tion. In vain his comrades jeered, ridi- 
258 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


culed, implored, and threatened — Hicks only 
grinned good-naturedly, and continued his 
demoralizing career. 

In truth, he did develop what Coach Cor- 
ridan declared to be a “perfect form” in the 
high jump. However, as it is a well estab- 
lished fact that a successful high-jumper 
must be able to clear the bar at a good height, 
the pestersome Freshman’s form availed 
nothing, since he could sail over only about 
four feet, three inches. In practice, how- 
ever, he was so persevering that he smashed 
all the crossbars, to the indignation of Icha- 
bod, and the other bar-toppers. Hicks’ aim 
was high, but not his record. 

It was not until the night before the great 
Sophomore-Freshman track meet that big, 
good-natured Butch Brewster learned the 
cause of Hicks’ mysterious training, and dis- 
covered why his heedless, bothersome com- 


259 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


rade plodded around the quarter-mile track, 
day after day. 

Lumbering across the corridor, after first 
inspection. Butch found the festive Hicks 
enshrouded in abysmal melancholy, as he 
gazed sadly at the letter which, several weeks 
before, had electrified him into action. To 
behold his blithesome friend in a somber 
mood actually worried Butch, and he tried 
to cheer up the usually jocund Freshman. 

“Glooming, old man?” he queried briskly. 
“What’s wrong? Smile, Hicks — we have a 
splendid chance to win the year’s honors! 
We are sure of the baseball game, and we 
have a great show to annex the meet tomor- 
row ” 

“Sure !” grinned Hicks, for a moment his 
old, irrepressible self. “Because, Butch, I 
am going to enter several events to star for 
my class !” 


260 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 

“Then we Freshmen should feel gloomy !” 
retorted Butch, stunned by the announce- 
ment. “Hicks — don’t do it! You know 
everybody likes you, and you are a popular, 
generous, good-hearted chap, but — well, you 
remember the class football game, and you 

might manage to ” 

“Don’t, Butch — please!” implored Hicks, 
so seriously that the big Freshman was 
alarmed. “I know I am a butterfly, futile 
fellow, but honestly, old man, I have not 
been trifling, when I trained so hard! I 
know you track athletes believed I just came 

out to be a pest, but ” 

"What!” Butch Brewster exploded, star- 
ing at the slim Hicks, who seemed terribly 
in earnest. “You — you are going to make 
a general nuisance of yourself in the class 
track meet tomorrow? Hicks, for the 
honor of your class — don’t!” 

261 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


For answer, Hicks extended to the dazed 
Butch the letter he had received weeks be- 
fore, on the steps of Creighton Hall. Obey- 
ing his friend’s order to read, he unfolded 
the sheet and saw, in the strong, clear hand- 
writing of Thomas Haviland Hicks, Sr.: 

Dear Son Thomas: 

Your last term’s report gratified me im- 
mensely, and I am proud of your class record, 
and scholastic achievements! Pitch in and 
lead your class, and make your Dad happy ! 

But there is something else of which I want 
to write, Thomas. As you must know, it has 
always been a cause of keen regret to me 
that you have never seemed to care for ath- 
letics of any sort — you appear to be too in- 
dolent and ease-loving to sacrifice, or to en- 
dure the hardships of training. I suppose 
it is beause of my athletic record both at 
Bannister and at old Yale that I am so eager 
to see you become a star ; in fact, it is my 
life’s most cherished ambition to have you 
become as famous as your Dad. 

However, I realize that my fond dream 
can never come true — Nature has not made 


262 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


you naturally strong and athletic, and what 
athletic success you may gain, must come 
from long and hard training and practice. 
If you can only win your college letter, your 
B, Thomas, while at Bannister, I shall be 
fully content. 

I said nothing when you failed even to 
try for the teams at your Preparatory School, 
but I did hope that at Bannister, under good 
coaches and trainers, you would at least en- 
deavor to win your letter. I must admit 
that I am disappointed, for you have not 
even made an earnest effort to find your 
event. Often, by trying, everything, espe- 
cially in a track meet, a fellow ‘‘finds his 
event,’’ and later stars in it ! 

I really believe that if you would start in 
now to develop yourself by regular, system- 
atic gymnasium work, and if you would only 
try, in a year or so you could make a Ban- 
ister team. Theodore Roosevelt, you know, 
was a puny, weakly boy, but he built himself 
up, and became an athlete ! If you want to 
please me, start now and try to find your 
event — attempt all the sports, all the various 
track and field events, and always, build 
yourself up by exercise in the gym. 

And — you owe it to your alma mater, my 

263 


18 


T.HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


son ! Even if, after co'nscientious effort, you 
fail to win your B, to know that you have 
given your college and teams what help you 
could, will please your Dad! Remember — 
the fellow who toils on the scrubs is the true 
hero! If you become good enough to give 
the first eleven, the first nine, the first five, 
or the first track squad, a hard rub and a fast 
practice, you are serving Bannister! 

I don’t ask you to do this, Thomas — I only 
say that it will make me happy, just to know 
you are striving! If you never get beyond 
the scrubs, just to hear you are serving the 
Gold and Green, giving your best, in that 
humble, unhonored way, will please me. 
And if, before you graduate, you can win 
your B, I will be so glad ! Don’t get discour- 
aged, it may take until your Senior year, but 
if you once start — stick! 

Your loving 

Dad. 

Butch was silent, as he gazed at his de- 
pressed comrade — then he crossed the room 
to Hicks, who was standing by the window, 
T, Haviland Hicks, Jr., put his arm across 
264 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


the broad shoulders of this big, good-natured, 
loyal collegian, who had become his firm 
friend. For a moment he was silent, and 
when at last he spoke, Butch knew he was 
deeply in earnest. 

“You know. Butch,” he began slowly, “my 
Dad graduated here at Bannister, before he 
went to Yale. He was the greatest all- 
round athlete the Gold and Green ever knew 
— a splendid fullback, a famous sprinter, a 
wonderful pitcher, and a basketball player. 
At Yale, he was all-American fullback for 
two seasons, and one of the finest athletes 
the Blue ever had ! 

“When I was born, old man, after my two 
sisters had somewhat disappointed Dad by 
not being embryo athletes, he was wild with 
joy! It was his life’s ambition to have his 
son follow in his footsteps, to fight again his 
gridiron battles, to break the tape for Ban- 
265 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


nister as he had done, to pitch the Gold and 
Green to victory, as in the old days, my father 
did!” 

“I understand,” murmured Butch sym- 
pathetically. “Go on, Hicks !” 

“When I was little,” continued Hicks, 
“Dad used to take me on his knee and tell me 
of his ambition — after Bannister, I was to be 
a star athlete at Yale, and to eclipse the mar- 
velous record he had made for the Blue. He 
used to picture the glorious future, with my- 
self performing prodigies on the athletic 
field, and old Yale grads saying. That's a son 
of the famous Hicks, of years ago!’ 

“Well, Butch, you know the rest ! I grew 
up, weak and thin — I never had good health 
until a few years ago, and I just could not 
develop, while I had absolutely no athletic 
powers. You can understand what a terrible 
disappointment I have been to Dad, though 
266 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


he has never breathed a word of it. At High 
School and Prep I didn’t try to make the 
teams, and that hurt my Dad, too ! 

“Since I got this letter, I’ve been trying 
all the track and field events, but it seems use- 
less, and I do want to win my B, and please 
my Dad! Coach Corridan says my high 
jump form is good, but I am too weak to 
make any kind of height. But perhaps — if 
I do take gym work regularly, and practice 
faithfully, by my last year, anyhow, I may 
be developed enough to win my letter, at 
least!” 

Butch Brewster, bewildered, surveyed the 
serious countenance of his pathetically ear- 
nest classmate, and gasped his astonish- 
ment. 

“Why, Hicks — old man!” he breathed. 
“Forgive me ! I teased you as much as any- 
one about your ridiculous track training ! I 
267 


iT. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


thought you were just trifling, as usual — I — 
I never dreamed you were in earnest !” 

“That’s all right, Butch!” smiled Hicks 
sunnily. “You know now — it’s my greatest 
ambition just to win my B, here at old Ban- 
nister, for that would make Dad the happiest 
man alive ! I am going to do as he suggests 
— build myself up, and keep plugging away — 
perhaps, even if I fail to win the letter, I can 
serve my alma mater, on the scrubs ! 

“Don’t tell anyone what I have told you, 
old man ! I’ll enter the track meet tomorrow, 
and try to find my event, but you keep on 
chaffing me, and making fun of me, so they 
won’t suspect I am in earnest. I don’t mind 
their jeers, for I know they are good-nat- 
ured ” 

“Of course!” boomed Butch. “They — 
they just don’t understand, Hicks !” 

“There doesn’t seem any hope of my ever 
268 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


winning my letter, and making my Dad 
happy,” said Hicks, gloomily, “but now I 
know his greatest ambition, and I will not 
quit trying, until I graduate ! I know I’m in 
for a lot of ridicule, but I’ll stick ! I’m a use- 
less chap, but I do like to make people glad, 
and as my Dad is the finest man on earth, 
I’d do anything to give him joy !” 

Butch was silent. So this was the happy- 
go-lucky, care-free, generous T. Haviland 
Hicks, Jr., whom he had thought he knew 
so well ! Handicapped by the proportions of 
a mosquito, the slender youth was determined 
to do his best to win his athletic letter, to 
gratify his father’s ambition! And when 
Butch had believed his friend to be a pest, 
trifling with track work, Hicks had been in 
deadly earnest! 

“Never mind, old man — ” he choked. 
“There doesn’t seem much chance, that’s 
269 


T.HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


true, but remember — you have three more 
years to strive in! I’ll not tell a soul about 
this, Hicks, and I’ll keep on teasing you, but 
— I’ll understand !” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., with all his old, 
self-assured confidence, faced the sym- 
pathetic Butch Brewster, and chirped 
blithely : 

“Just leave it to me. Butch I Bear in mind 
this solemn vow I hereby make in your pres- 
ence : before I graduate from Bannister Col- 
lege and leave forever the classic halls of my 
alma mater, I will have won my B, in three 
branches of sport I” 

As a Bannister athlete, to win the coveted 
letter, must make the regular team, or take 
part in one of the few games for which the 
B was awarded to those playing in the contest 
for the Gold and Green, and Hicks’ chances 
seemed worse than hopeless. Butch was 


270 


HICKS GETS A LETTER 


dazed. For a moment he gazed at the blithe- 
some, self-confident Hicks, so serene in his 
rash statement, and then : 

“You — ” exploded big Butch Brewster, 
and for the want of something more emphatic 
to say, he repeated: “You!” 


XV 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 

OU — a track athlete!” jeered big Beef 



McNaughton, “Why, Hicks, you ani- 
mated bean-pole, a complete synopsis of your 
track ability could be written on the back of 
a postage stamp, with a railroad spike dipped 
in glue I” 

“Them’s harsh words. Beef I” chirped the 
blithesome T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., whose 
toothpick framework was concealed under a 
flamboyant bathrobe of such generous pro- 
portions that Hercules himself might have 
lurked within its folds. “Just wait until I 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


have smashed several dozen track records to- 
day, and you will reconsider your cruel senti- 
ment !” 

The two Freshmen were standing by the 
jumping pit on Bannister Field, inside the 
smoothly rolled quarter-mile cinder track. 
Flocks of lightly garbed Mercuries flitted 
around the oval, athletes flung themselves to 
perilous heights in pole-vault practice, tim- 
ber-toppers perfected “form” over the 
hurdles, heavy-weights tossed the shot or 
hurled the hammer, high- jumpers slid over 
the bar with a kick and a turn, and sprinters 
tore madly down the straightaway for thirty 
yards. 

Aided and abetted by the riotous rooters 
and a large crowd of enthusiastic spectators 
at the track-side, the track teams of the two 
lower classes warmed up for that eventful 
occasion — the Sophomore-Freshman track 

273 


,T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


meet. This annual contest, let it be added, 
was always eventful, speaking both in a 
literal and a figurative sense ! 

Thanks to the care-free Hicks, the Fresh- 
men had captured the class rush, and thanks 
to that graceless youth, they had lost the 
gridiron contest. Whichever track team tri- 
umphed, the defeated class could still make 
the honors of the year even by winning the 
final event — the baseball game. In truth, the 
object of having four contests was to make 
it possible for the rivals to end their year of 
strife on equal terms, so that neither might 
exult for the remainder of its college career. 

However, for the one year the rivalry was 
all the more intense, as each class was natu- 
rally ambitious to annex three victories, and 
thus hold an unchallenged claim to superior- 
ity over the other. In the track meet, success 
seemed to smile on the Freshmen, but Jack 
274 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


Merritt’s aggregation of cinder-path artists 
was determined to win, so that the baseball 
game would give the Sophomores a chance 
at supremacy. 

“Listen, Hicks — ” expostulated Pudge, 
seriously. “You know there is nothing you 
can do in this meet ! Haven’t you class spirit 
enough to work where you can help ’19 the 
most — by using that foghorn voice of yours 
to encourage your team ?” 

“Pudge,” responded T. Haviland Hicks, 
Jr., with extreme solemnity, “I can tie a 
freight car loaded with pig-iron to one leg, 
an automobile truck full of fat men to the 
other, carry a ton of steel in each hand, run 
backward, and beat ’i8’s fastest sprinter to 
the tape so far in any event that I can peruse 
‘The Rise and Decline of the Roman Empire,’ 
before he gets near enough to be reached by 
a wireless telegram ! This, I trust, will give 


275 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


you fellows a vague idea of how speedy I 
really am !” 

“You must not pester the real athletes!” 
vowed Butch. “I admit there seems no pos- 
sible way by which you can cause a catas- 
trophe, as in the football game, but we don’t 
want such an utterly useless mortal as you 
underfoot, for ’19 must win today!” 

“I fail to perceive how you can prevent my 
being a track star,” grinned the irrepressible 
Hicks, with evident logic, “despite your pro- 
fessional jealousy, because the fashion of 
running off this important meet allows me 
to wander away with first place in every 
event, if I decide to !” 

Owing to the fact that no candidate for the 
class track teams had the slightest definite 
idea of his prowess, and that the captains’ 
estimate of their track material was far from 
flattering, also, because it was impossible to 
276 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


foretell which would-be stars were going to 
show up, or what they would do if they ap- 
peared, the following plan was always used : 

As each event was announced,, the Sopho- 
mores and Freshmen who had decided to 
enter it, or had been advised to do so, re- 
ported to the judges in charge of it, and their 
names were registered. The event was then 
run off, and the results jotted down — so 
many points for each place winner. At the 
conclusion of the final event the score was 
reckoned, and the class team having the 
greater number of points corralled the meet ! 

Members of the Junior and Senior classes, 
most of them the regular Bannister track 
team athletes, officiated as announcers, clerks 
of the course, track and field judges, starters, 
timers, and score-keepers. Three judges 
handled each event, and their services were 
needed, to direct that horde of inexperienced 


277 


T.HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

and nervous novices in the required manner. 

Hence, as T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had re- 
marked, in other words, there was no way to 
prevent him from making a general nuisance 
of himself, for all he had to do was to select 
the events which he decided to grace with his 
honorable presence, report to the judges as 
each event was announced, and then — well, 
what would happen was extremely likely to 
be spectacular ! 

"First call for the hundred-yard dash!” 
bellowed Dad Rogers, through a monster 
megaphone. "All candidates for this event 
report to the judges at once at the starting 
line for registration !” 

In secret amusement — and sympathy — 
Butch Brewster, who was not a sprinter, but 
a phenomenal long distance runner, stood at 
the starting line and gazed at the grinning 
Hicks, still protected from the public gaze 
278 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


by that athletic bathrobe, as he reported for 
the event. The Freshmen who really could 
run — Billy Hams worth, Ted Haddon, and 
little Sheet Wigglesworth — a speedy trio — 
believed, it must be stated, that they had no 
chance against — Hicks ! 

The mosquito-like youth was in the first 
heat, and when the Senior acting as starter 
ordered the sprinters: “On your marks!” 
Hicks, with a dramatic gesture, shed his lurid 
bathrobe, and stepped forward to the scratch 
line! Now, no one has ever accused the 
airy garb worn by a track athlete of deceiv- 
ing the public as to the general structure of 
its wearer, and the debonair Freshman’s 
picturesque outfit revealed what the bathrobe 
had concealed — practically nothing ! 

At the same instant that Hicks, in all his 
splendor, burst upon the vision of the riotous 
spectators, making a sensational debut as a 
19 279 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


track star, a sextette of Sophomores, includ- 
ing the deep voices of Heavy and Babe, lined 
up across the track. Led by Bucky Turner, 
who employed all the gymnastics of an 
orchestra leader, they chanted loudly : 

“Hurrah for T. Haviland Hicks ! 

We Sophs are on to his tricks ! 

He is built like a rail, he can’t beat a snail, 

He runs on a pair of toothpicks ! 

Hicks can’t cast a shadow at all — 

And if to the tape he could crawl. 

He’s so skinny and slim, the tape would break 
him — 

If you look at him hard, he will fall 1” 

Riotous cheers from the collegians hailed 
this vocal outburst, and the spectators, re- 
membering vividly Hicks’ brilliant per- 
formance in the class football game, literally 
hugged themselves in delighted anticipation. 
Humorous advice of all description was 
cheerfully given him, shrieks of amusement 
280 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


arose, and remarks not particularly com- 
plimentary were passed on his appearance in 
a track suit. 

“Get set!” called the starter, and Hicks, 
imitating the others, assumed an intensely 
grotesque attitude which he confidently be- 
lieved was the starting crouch, but which 
more resembled the position of a small boy 
afflicted with the aftermath of a green apple 
debauch. When the pistol cracked, the other 
sprinters shot away from their marks, Hicks 
well up with them, for the report had alarmed 
him into a wild burst of speed. 

As the sunny Freshman’s track prowess 
would have caused the winner of the pro- 
verbial Hare-Tortoise special race to blush 
with pride, it is not necessary to chronicle 
the fact that Hicks finished so far in the rear 
as to arouse the query, “Is this another heat 
coming down the straightaway?” As he 
281 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


struggled wildly in the wake of the others, 
he was informed gratuitously that Christmas 
would probably arrive before he did, and that 
if he kept on, he might be mistaken for the 
winner of the second heat ! 

“I suppose you will smash a lot of records 
today, Hicks,” laughed Jack Merritt, when 
the exhausted Freshman at last staggered to 
the finish line, “If your entire team were 
like you, we’d continue this meet a week !” 

“I don’t notice that you have smashed any 
record yet,” declared Hicks, meaningly — he 
referred to the dictaphone one, which Jack 
had failed to find. “I am as likely to smash 
a Bannister record as you are to shatter a 
certain one! Anyhow, if I find my event, 
I’ll specialize in it from today on !” 

To the keen joy of the spectators, T. Havi- 
land Hicks, Jr., quite eclipsed the meet itself 
in importance, by reason of his ridiculous 
282 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


performances in various events — a series of 
hilarious fiascos. Like a gay butterfly flut- 
tering from flower to flower — extracting 
nothing from each — the festive Freshman 
flitted from one event to the next, and gained 
fully as much as the butterfly mentioned. 

In the hurdle race, he knocked down 
enough standards to disqualify a dozen tim- 
ber-toppers, and was finally brought to earth 
himself by the eighth one, which, when he 
crashed into it, retaliated by leaping up and 
smiting him in the chest. He straggled 
bravely along miles behind the rear guard in 
the distance runs, and grinningly endured 
the sarcastic or humorous remarks showered 
on him as he slowly circled the track, being 
“lapped” several times en route. 

He nearly dropped the sixteen-pound shot 
on his toes, and in negotiating the hammer- 
throw, he was swung off his feet, entangled 
283 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMANi 


in the wire handle, and forcibly hurled to the 
ground, to the rapturous delight of all who 
beheld his weird actions. His prowess in 
the running broad- jump was such as to cause 
the judges to remark that when he finished 
walking into the pit, he might venture to take 
his first trial ! 

The crowd settled itself to watch what 
Hicks would do next, and the fact that the 
two class teams were fighting hard for the 
lead, never more than ten points apart, was 
overlooked in the general mirth. When T. 
Haviland Hicks, Jr., announced himself to 
the judges of the pole-vault, a great shout 
of vociferous glee arose, and Butch Brewster, 
who had been sorrowfully watching his 
friend’s failures, remonstrated with him. 

“Oh, I’ll break the record in this!” de- 
clared Hicks, confidently. “There won’t be 
but four of us in the event. Butch ! Only a 
284 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


lack of training has kept me from carrying 
off the other events !” 

“You’ll break — ^your neck!” interposed 
Beef, angrily. “Can’t you understand that 
you have about as much athletic ability as a 
blind rooster has the power to talk German ?’' 

Just why a blind rooster would be any 
more handicapped in speaking that language 
than one with vision, Beef failed to explain ; 
Hicks, serenely informing his friends that 
this meet was merely a tryout for him, in 
which he was striving to “find his event,” a 
seemingly hopeless quest, jogged away to the 
jumping pit. 

By some miracle, the slender Freshman 
succeeded in hurling himself bodily over the 
bar at the first height — six feet, though the 
crossbar quivered on its pegs. As one 
Sophomore had withdrawn, because of a 
sprained tendon, beside Hicks, there was a 
28s 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


second-year athlete, and a classmate, both 
of whom were fine pole-vaulters. 

The bar was raised to seven feet, and as 
Hicks’ best known record encompassed the 
height of six, what happened when the 
cheery Freshman manfully essayed his sec- 
ond vault is well within the realms of prob- 
ability. An awed hush settled on the spec- 
tators — even the class rooters were silent, 
as T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., backed off a great 
distance, gripped the pole feverishly, and 
stared at the crossbar. 

“That’s a high seven feet !” he murmured. 
“Measured by that scale, the Woolworth 
Building must be nine miles high !” 

Finally, sprinting madly — for him — ^Hicks 
dashed resolutely at the takeoff, planted the 
pole, and soared high in air ! By a supreme 
effort, he had gathered sufficient momentum 
to raise his feet over the crossbar, but he 
286 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


lacked the impetus or the power to impel 
his slender frame after them. For a terrify- 
ing moment he hovered, half over the bar, 
and then he followed the truth of the 
old adage, “What goes up, must come 
down !” 

Hicks, ever original, crashed down on the 
bar, breaking it, and descended gracefully to 
earth, coming down on the back of his neck 
in the soft pit, and narrowly missing the 
take-off beam! As the pole and the shat- 
tered crossbar clattered down on him. Butch 
Brewster and Captain Tug Warren, vastly 
excited, rushed up and literally hurled them- 
selves on the prostrate Hicks! 

“Hicks,” panted Butch feverishly, “is it 
true — ^what Beef says — that you did manage 
to get over the bar at six feet ?” 

“Did you vault it on your first trial?” 
questioned Tug eagerly. “Is that the official 
287 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN, 

record the judges put down for you in this 
event?” 

“Sure!” grinned Hicks, as he gazed 
serenely up at his classmates. “But why all 
this furore over my feat — in fact, over my 
entire anatomy? A vault of six feet will 
never win the event, fellows!” 

For answer, the two Freshmen leaped up, 
executed a wild and weird dance of exulta- 
tion about the prone and paralyzed Hicks, 
and then, pulling him to his feet, they hoisted 
him to their shoulders and bore him in tri- 
umph around the track, followed by the won- 
dering, but nevertheless, clamorous members 
of the first-year class. 

“Butch — end this torture!” begged the 
dazed Hicks, when he was at last put down. 
“What have I done. Tug?” 

“What have you done?” repeated the joy- 
ous Butch. “Why, Hicks, nothing much — 
288 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


only, by clearing the bar at the dizzy height 
of six feet in the pole-vault, you have won 
the class meet for dear old ’19!” 

Then he explained — while each class was 
allowed to enter as many athletes in each 
event as it chose, only three places counted 
for points. First, second, and third places 
won respectively five, three, and two points, 
to be reckoned in the final score. The object 
of having the total points from second and 
third places in an event equal the five for 
first place was to encourage under-classmen 
of lesser ability, who would feel that even a 
third place meant some glory. 

When the pole-vault, the ’ final event, 
started, there remained two track-events to 
be run off, and when these were finished, the 
score stood fifty to forty-nine points, in favor 
of the Freshmen. As there were but three 
entrants in the pole-vault — one Sophomore, 
289 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

and two Freshmen — Hicks was sure of third 
place and two points, provided he cleared the 
bar once, and had a height put to his credit ! 
His classmate, a good pole-vaulter, was sure 
of second, if his rival beat him out for first ! 

“They’ll win the first place five points,” said 
Tug, “which will bring their score up to 
fifty-four — the final ! Our second place in the 
pole-vault, with its three points, and Hicks’ 
third place, with two points, gives the Fresh- 
men a total of fifty-five, so ’19 wins the meet 
by one point ! If you, Hicks, had not cleared 
the ludicrous height of six feet, you would 
not have been entitled to your two points, and 
the final score would be — Sophomores, fifty- 
four; Freshmen, fifty-three!” 

“Hicks!” exclaimed the happy Butch, as 
he thumped his bewildered comrade on the 
shoulders. “Hicks — this ought to encour- 
age you for — you know what! It proves 


290 


HICKS ACCIDENTALLY STARS 


that you never know when the most humble 
service you can render your class or college 
will prove a great help! Six feet could be 
cleared by a paralytic octogenarian, yet by 
doing it, you won the meet for your class !” 

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., stood for a few 
moments in silence, gazing at the rioting 
Freshmen, who now understood that victory 
perched upon their banners, thanks to their 
slim classmate, whose efforts they had ridi- 
culed all the afternoon. Of course, it had 
been due to no prowess of Hicks that the 
score had been so close when the final event 
was run off, but the fact remained that had 
the toothpick Freshman failed to make his 
first trial, the class of 1919 would have lost 
the meet by one point, instead of winning it 
by that narrow margin ! 

Butch Brewster, awaiting the inevitable 
and tantalizing self-confident assurance with 


291 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


which Hicks always celebrated his achieve- 
ments, was prepared to crush him, but the 
Freshman turned to him, his face aglow. 

“I’m so glad. Butch !” he breathed happily. 
“I know I was lucky, because there were but 
three of us in the event — still, I could not 
have scored those two points had I failed, 
even at that ridiculous height — and the 
Sophomore won the event with ten feet, six 
inches! I do understand now that I may 
serve old Bannister in just such humble 
ways, even though I never become a star!” 

“Right!” agreed Butch, softly, and then: 
“If I were you, Hicks, I’d write to that Dad 
of yours tonight, and tell him ” 

“That I’ll try my hardest!” finished 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., “for my alma mater, 
and if I never rise above a third-place glory, 
if I have always done my very best for the 
Gold and Green — I’ll be content !” 


292 


XVI 

EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 

T HAVILAND hicks, JR., stood by 
• the window of his room, wrapped in 
a somber mantle of profound melancholy, as 
he gazed out across the dark, silent Quad- 
rangle and the desolate Bannister campus. 

No bright lights gleamed from the dormi- 
tory windows, no footsteps echoed in the 
Quad, he heard none of the riotous skylark- 
ing, the joyous shouts, the clamorous tumult 
in the corridors, as of old. There sounded 
no melodious chorus of voices from Nordyke, 
as when the care-free Juniors roared the 


293 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


rollicking refrain, “Here’s to Dear Old Ban- 
nister, drink her down, drink her down !” 

Only the mellow chimes of the ’02 clock, 
echoing from the library tower, announced 
to the unheeding Hicks the hour of midnight. 

Strangely enough, the sunny Freshman 
was not twanging his banjo, and he possessed 
no insane desire to torture his comrades with 
what he alone designated as singing. His 
fervid necktie was actually an infinitesimal 
fraction of an inch out of the correct position, 
but the meditative youth was not overcome 
with dismay. 

His abode, lately so cozy and cheerful, 
seemed to have been sideswiped by a tornado 
in good health. Gone were the easy chairs, 
the luxurious davenport, the carpet and soft 
tiger-skin rugs; the walls had been rudely 
despoiled of tennis rackets, crossed foils, box- 
ing-gloves, and other athletic things so futile 


294 


EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 


to Hicks. Pictures and posters, the beloved 
banjo — even “The Retreat of Napoleon from 
Moscow” — all had disappeared ! 

Remained — a bare, bleak room, a colossal 
trunk, two large packing-boxes, a bulging 
suit-case, and — T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.! 
Hicks, Freshman, was about to pass ! 

“Well, it’s all over!” murmured the slim 
youth regretfully. “One year at dear old 
Bannister has passed, and at last I am a — 
Sophomore ! I don’t look or feel the slight- 
est bit different, but I am no longer an humble 
Freshman !” 

Commencement was over, and most of the 
collegians had left Bannister that night, but 
Hicks, with his loyal friend, big Butch Brew- 
ster, had lingered until morning, because of 
the former’s excess baggage. After the 
sadly solemn graduation exercises ended, 
and the students piled into Dan Flannagan’s 
30 295 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


barouche, or walked downtown to the station, 
Hicks had given Butch and Jack Merritt a 
sumptuous “blow-out” at Jerry’s, the popular 
rendezvous of hungry students. 

Now, while Butch and Jack finished pack- 
ing, the erstwhile Freshman leader indulged 
in the rare process of serious meditation. 
One by one, his friends had shaken his hand, 
thumped him on the back, and departed — 
Beef, Pudge, the skyscraper Ichabod, Billy, 
Ted, Chub, Cherub, Don, McGarrity, Tug — 
even the aristocratic Tobe Lawless, Mar- 
quette, and K. Smith — the lack-luster Hooli- 
gan, and last, but not least, devoted little 
Theophilus Opperdyke ! 

Time had sprinted after Hicks accidentally 
starred in the Sophomore-Freshman track 
meet, thus gaining fresh laurels. With the 
grinding for the final examinations, and a 
futile but frantic effort to make his class base- 
296 


EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 


ball nine, the blithesome Freshman had been 
intensely busy. 

Thanks to Butch Brewster’s mighty home 
run with the bases congested, in the Sopho- 
more-Freshman baseball game, the first-year 
class had captured three of the four events, 
and had triumphed over 1918. Both the 
class rush and the track meet had been 
annexed through Hicks’ eflForts — intentional 
or otherwise — and in addition, though due 
glory could never be his, T. Haviland Hicks, 
Jr., had stolen the Sophomore colors. Truly, 
under his leadership, 1919 had been supreme ! 

Soon the behemoth Butch, followed by Jack 
Merritt, now a Junior, and accordingly, care- 
free and jolly, lumbered across the corridor, 
strode over the bare floor, and joined his 
friend by the window. 

“One year gone, old man !” he said, 
stirred by some strange emotion. “But we 


297 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 

have three more, Hicks — three more years 
to — to do things worth while, not for our- 
selves, but for dear old Bannister!” 

“You are right, Butch!” exclaimed Jack 
Merritt, his clean-cut features aglow. “That 
is just the way I felt last Commencement, 
fellows ! Don’t you know, the Freshman 
year is just a finding of yourself- — the class is 
a big, chaotic mass, and in its frantic desire 
to become organized and in fighting trim 
against the Sophs, it forgets the college — its 
alma mater! 

“But slowly the Freshman comes to realize 
that there is more to a college course than 
himself, or even his class — ^he sees that every- 
thing must be for the honor and glory of his 
college, that he must sacrifice himself for 
his alma mater, that his class must put itself 
aside for Bannister’s sake ! Having learned 
this, in his Freshman year, a fellow is ready 
298 


EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 

to serve the Gold and Green for the rest of 
his course!” 

“You are right, Jack,” responded Butch 
ser-iously. “It is the spirit of the campus — 
gradually, surely, it pervades the Freshman, 
making him intensely loyal to his college, 
ready to do even the humblest things in her 
service! Now I know what ‘college spirit’ 
really is — it is a love for your alma mater, 
and a readiness to sacrifice yourself for Ban- 
nister !” 

There was a silence, for the three col- 
legians felt that spirit of sadness which 
hovers over the campus at Commencement. 
They had just seen the Seniors, after four 
years at Bannister, put asunder the happy 
ties that had linked them to the college, leave 
behind forever the golden days, and go forth 
into the world, to live ! 

“Fellows,” began Hicks, at last, and they 


299 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


were startled at his earnestness, “I think the 
spirit of the campus has possessed me ! I’ve 
been a heedless, care-free sort of chap, too 
indolent and ease-loving to try for the teams, 
or to help them in any way. I’ve not thought 
much about serving my alma mater, but 
after this, I will do my best for my class and 
my college!” 

“Why, old man — ” interposed Butch, but 
Hicks kept on: 

“If I can’t make the first teams. I’ll strive 
for the scrubs, and — if I don’t make the 
scrubs. I’ll do my part by rubbing-out the 
players after practice, by marking off the 
gridiron, by doing anything, however small, 
to serve my college ! 

“I realize now that college life does mean 
something beside twanging a banjo, eating at 
Jerry’s, and having a big time! This year, 
I have been taking the best my college has 


300 


EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 


ofifered me, and giving nothing of myself in 
return — from now on, I want to do things 
worth while ! 

“Of course, I intend to enjoy my college 
existence, but if I can only arouse myself, I 
will take things more seriously ” 

“Good for you, Hicks!” shouted Jack, 
while Butch shook his hand gladly. “But — 
don’t stop being the same Hicks you have 
been this year ! Be your old, sunny self, and 
we’ll be satisfied !” 

There was another silence, broken when 
Jack glanced at his watch and declared he 
must go — he was leaving town on the “Owl,” 
a train that poked into the station at one 
o’clock in the morning. Butch and Hicks 
were to depart on the upbound morning 
express, the last to leave the campus and old 
Bannister. 

“I’ll walk down as far as the street with 


301 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


you, Jack,” said Butch, after Hicks had 
stated himself as being too busy to accom- 
pany them. “Wait up for me, Hicks — I’ll 
be back soon.” 

There was an awkward pause, in which 
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., and Jack Merritt 
stood gazing at each other, unable to express 
the thought that was uppermost in their 
minds. 

“Rats !” exploded Butch Brewster, laugh- 
ing as he somewhat inelegantly relieved their 
embarrassment. “Say it, you two lunatics! 
Say, that now the year is ended, and your 
rivalry as class leaders is finished, you are so 
glad you are to be chums from now on ! Say 
that you mutually admire each other, and 
that you earnestly want each other’s firm 
friendship I” 

“That’s it. Butch!” breathed Jack Merritt, 
and his hand went out, to be met in a firm 


302 


EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 


pact of comradeship by the happy Hicks. 
Next year, some new Freshman would 
arise, to lead his clan against the Sophomore 
leader, who might be Hicks, or another of 
1919! 

“So long, then,” added Jack, striving to 
appear nonchalant, and failing miserably. 
“See you next fall, Hicks !” 

“Clear out of here!” commanded Hicks, 
huskily. “It’s only for a few months, so why 
all this lachrymose parting? Oh, by the 
way, Jack — ^here is a parting present for 
you !” 

From the closet he produced a small 
bundle, which, when unwrapped by the curi- 
ous Jack Merritt, proved to be the precious 
dictaphone record, containing that which 
would have made the Sophomore leader the 
laughing-stock of all Bannister. 

“I have kept my promise,” smiled Hicks. 


303 


.T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


“The record has been safely stowed away in 
a deposit box in the safety vault of a down- 
town bank, Jack, so all your efforts to shat- 
ter it were vain ! Smash it, and no one will 
ever know how you were outwitted ! Break 
it to smithereens !” 

Down in the Quadrangle, the two col- 
legians paused a moment, as Jack dashed the 
dictaphone record against the concrete walk, 
shattering it forever, and sacrificing Hicks’ 
last chance of glory therefrom. Then they 
had to stand, gazing over the well-loved 
campus, watching the moonlight silver the 
buildings of old Bannister, their alma 
mater. 

And as they stood, too strangely moved for 
speech, a slender figure appeared at the win- 
dow of Hicks’ room, and even as it had done 
on that night the first of the college year, 
when Jack Merritt first saw Hicks, a resur- 


304 


EXIT HICKS, FRESHMAN 


rected banjo twanged, and a raucous voice 
roared: 

“Oh, the bulldog on the bank, and the bullfrog 
— in — the — po — oo — ol ! 

Oh, the bulldog on the bank, and the — ” 

“Hicks will ‘take things more seriously’ !” 
quoted the wrathful Butch, who had been im- 
pressed by the earnestness of the slim youth. 
“I really believed him, Jack; I was glad that 
the spirit of the campus had transformed him 
from a gay, debonair idler to something more 
worth while !” 

“That looks like it !” laughed Jack. “You 
need never expect to see that scatter-brained, 
sunny, good-natured, generous Hicks be 
anything but the impulsive, heedless, and 
loyal comrade he is now!” 

But just then, as if in contradiction of 
Jack’s statement, the voice of Thomas Havi- 

30s 


T. HAVILAND HICKS, FRESHMAN 


land Hicks, Jr., softened by some deep feel- 
ing — by a love for his alma mater — floated 
across the Quad, and brought a mist to 
their eyes as they listened to what he sang: 

“Dear old Bannister — ^hail, all hail ! 

Echoes softly from each heart; 

We’ll be ever loyal to thee — 

Till we from life shall part!” 


( 1 ) 


THE END 










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